haskell / haskell/cabal

Per-Version Index Cache in ~/.cabal directory

Open
#7,502 7 comments 5 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
attention: pr-welcome cabal-install: other type: enhancement
Dominant language
Haskell
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Forks
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Switching between cabal install versions can occur either when developing cabal, or when using nix-shells that bring different versions into scope, among other reasons.

Each time you switch versions, you get `Warning: Parsing the index cache failed` and it needs to regenerate the index cache.

This can be tedious and time consuming.

I suggest that cabal store its index cache per-cabal-version rather than always in the same spot, thus helping to more frequently avoid this issue.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by tracing how cabal-install reads and writes the index cache under ~/.cabal, including how the active Cabal version can be identified. Define completion as keeping caches separate across Cabal versions and avoiding the parsing warning and regeneration when switching between them; verify the behavior by switching versions or environments.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
haskell
Domain
build-system, cli
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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