How to get cabal-install Distribution.Client.IndexUtils

Question

I were trying to add cabal-install and Cabal-install to .cabal file but.

At least the following dependencies are missing: Cabal-install -any

Why there is no cabal-install?

So how can I get Distribution.Client.IndexUtils except of embedding cabal-install sources?

and Distribution.Client.IndexUtils too.

Or maybe I can replace it with something?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, cabal-install is a package that provides an executable, but no library. Therefore, there is no easy way to use functionality provided by cabal-install in other tools. A common approach is to write wrapper programs that invoke the cabal binary and query it for information.

Having some of the functionality of cabal-install available as a library is a valid and reasonable goal, but it might take a while before this happens.

As to the error message: If a package installs only an executable, it is not registered as a library with GHC. Therefore, if you list cabal-install as a dependency of another package, you will get the error message that cabal-install is missing (as a library).