
Matthew Pickering
authored
In this PR we make the `--package-db` flag apply only to the default immutable initial package stack rather than also applying to the store package database. There are two special package databases which cabal install knows about and treats specially. * The store directory, a global cache of installed packages where cabal builds and installs packages into. * The inplace directory, a local build folder for packages, where cabal builds local packages in. It is very important that cabal registers packages it builds into one of these two locations as there are many assumptions that packages will end up here. With the current design of the `--package-db` flag, you are apparently allowed to override the store location which should have the effect of making the last package database in the package stack the "store" directory. Perhaps this works out in theory but practically this behaviour was broken and things were always registered into the store directory that cabal knew about. (The assertion in `ProjectBuilding.UnpackedPackage` was failing (see added test)). With `--package-db` not being able to modify the location of the store directory then the interaction of `--package-db`, `--store-dir` and `--dist-dir` flags become easy to understand. * `--package-db` modify the initial package database stack, these package database will not be mutated by cabal and provide the initial package environment which is used by cabal. * `--store-dir` modify the location of the store directory * `--dist-dir` modify the location of the dist directory (and hence inplace package database) Treating the flags in this way also fix an assertion failure when building packages. Fixes #9678