Is it possible to install package from sources with something similar to stack build package-name? (latter works with packages on Stackage, but not with custom ones)
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Um, stack build (within the source directory)?
Stack doesn't really have a notion of installing libraries though, it only installs executables. To “install” locally-sourced packages, you need to specify what for you want them installed: add them as dependencies to another project, via a location: field in the packages: field in that project's stack.yaml file.
That's arguably sensible since, one might say, there's nothing you can do with an installed library except invoking it in another Haskell project (or in a REPL, which you can get with stack ghci). I personally don't hold with that though, I like actually being able to say install that library now. Which is one of the reasons I have always stuck to good old cabal-install rather than Stack. With that, you can just
cabal install
from within the source directory.
Cabal-install has often been criticised: its local installs can easily get out of sync and then you have weird dependency conflicts and need to rebuild lots of stuff. I never found this that much of a problem, and anyway this has been adressed in recent Cabal through Nix-style builds, which never produce conflicts.
answered Aug 3, 2017 at 16:01
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What about stack global project? Can global project configuration be considered as sort of local installation? I guess Stack will make all packages mentioned in global stack.yaml available to ghci if you just start it with
stack ghcioutside of project directory, but global stack.yaml will be completely overridden by project stack.yaml if one present in project directory. Commented Aug 7, 2017 at 9:34