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Snapshot specification

Snapshot specification

2.1.1

Snapshots provide a list of packages to use, along with flags, GHC options, and a few other settings. Snapshots may extend any other snapshot that can be specified in a snapshot or resolver key. The packages specified follow the same syntax for dependencies in Stack's project-level configuration files. Unlike the extra-deps key, however, no support for local directories is available in snapshots to ensure reproducibility.

Info

Stack uses the Pantry library for snapshot specification.

snapshot: lts-22.7 # Inherits GHC version and package set
compiler: ghc-9.6.3 # Overwrites GHC version in the snapshot, optional

# Additional packages, follows extra-deps syntax
packages:
- unordered-containers-0.2.7.1
- hashable-1.2.4.0
- text-1.2.2.1

# Packages from the parent snapshot to ignore
drop-packages:
- wai-extra

# Packages which should be hidden
hidden:
  wai: true
  warp: false

# Set GHC options for specific packages
ghc-options:
  warp:
  - -O2

# Override flags, can also override flags in the parent snapshot
flags:
  unordered-containers:
    debug: true

If you put this in a snapshot.yaml file in the same directory as your project, you can now use the snapshot like this:

snapshot: snapshot.yaml

This is an example of a custom snapshot stored in the filesystem. They are assumed to be mutable, so you are free to modify it. We detect that the snapshot has changed by hashing the contents of the involved files, and using it to identify the snapshot internally. It is often reasonably efficient to modify a custom snapshot, due to Stack sharing snapshot packages whenever possible.

Overriding the compiler

The following snapshot specification will be identical to lts-22.7, but instead use ghc-9.6.3 instead of ghc-9.6.4:

snapshot: lts-22.7
compiler: ghc-9.6.3

Dropping packages

The following snapshot specification will be identical to lts-22.7, but without the text package in our snapshot. Removing this package will cause all the packages that depend on text to be unbuildable, but they will still be present in the snapshot.

snapshot: lts-22.7
drop-packages:
- text

Hiding packages

The following snapshot specification will be identical to lts-22.7, but the text package will be hidden when registering. This will affect, for example, the import parser in the script command.

snapshot: lts-22.7
hidden:
- text

Specifying GHC options

In order to specify GHC options for a package, you use the same syntax as the ghc-options key for build configuration.

The following snapshot specification will be identical to lts-22.7, but provides -O1 as a ghc-option for text:

snapshot: lts-22.7
packages:
- text-2.0.2
ghc-options:
  text: -O1

This works somewhat differently than the stack.yaml ghc-options field, in that options can only be specified for packages that are mentioned in the custom snapshot's packages list. It sets the ghc-options, rather than extending those specified in the snapshot being extended.

Another difference is that the * entry for ghc-options applies to all packages in the packages list, rather than all packages in the snapshot.

Specifying Cabal flags

In order to specify Cabal flags for a package, you use the same syntax as the flags key for build configuration. The following snapshot specification will be identical to lts-22.7, but it enables the developer Cabal flag:

snapshot: lts-22.7
packages:
- text-2.0.2
flags:
  text:
    developer: true