Build command¶
Overview¶
The primary command you use in stack is build. This page describes the build command's interface. The goal of the interface is to do the right thing for simple input, and allow a lot of flexibility for more complicated goals. See the build command section of the user guide for info beyond the CLI aspects of the build command.
Synonyms¶
One potential point of confusion is the synonym commands for build
. These are
provided to match commonly expected command line interfaces, and to make common
workflows shorter. The important thing to note is that all of these are just
the build
command in disguise. Each of these commands are called out as
synonyms in the --help
output. These commands are:
stack test
is the same asstack build --test
stack bench
is the same asstack build --bench
stack haddock
is the same asstack build --haddock
stack install
is the same asstack build --copy-bins
The advantage of the synonym commands is that they're convenient and short. The
advantage of the options is that they compose. For example, stack build --test
--copy-bins
will build libraries, executables, and test suites, run the test
suites, and then copy the executables to your local bin path (more on this
below).
Components¶
Components are a subtle yet important point to how build operates under the
surface. Every cabal package is made up of one or more components. It can have
0 or 1 libraries, and then 0 or more of executable, test, and benchmark
components. stack allows you to call out a specific component to be built, e.g.
stack build mypackage:test:mytests
will build the mytests
component of the
mypackage
package. mytests
must be a test suite component.
We'll get into the details of the target syntax for how to select components in
the next section. In this section, the important point is: whenever you target
a test suite or a benchmark, it's built and also run, unless you explicitly
disable running via --no-run-tests
or --no-run-benchmarks
. Case in point:
the previous command will in fact build the mytests
test suite and run it,
even though you haven't used the stack test
command or the --test
option.
(We'll get to what exactly --test
does below.)
This gives you a lot of flexibility in choosing what you want stack to do. You can run a single test component from a package, run a test component from one package and a benchmark from another package, etc.
One final note on components: you can only control components for local
packages, not dependencies. With dependencies, stack will always build the
library (if present) and all executables, and ignore test suites and
benchmarks. If you want more control over a package, you must add it to your
packages
setting in your stack.yaml file.
Target syntax¶
In addition to a number of options (like the aforementioned --test
), stack
build
takes a list of zero or more targets to be built. There are a number
of different syntaxes supported for this list:
-
package, e.g.
stack build foobar
, is the most commonly used target. It will try to find the package in the following locations: local packages, extra dependencies, snapshots, and package index (e.g. Hackage). If it's found in the package index, then the latest version of that package from the index is implicitly added to your extra dependencies.This is where the
--test
and--bench
flags come into play. If the package is a local package, then all of the test suite and benchmark components are selected to be built, respectively. In any event, the library and executable components are also selected to be built. -
package identifier, e.g.
stack build foobar-1.2.3
, is usually used to include specific package versions from the index. If the version selected conflicts with an existing local package or extra dep, then stack fails with an error. Otherwise, this is the same as callingstack build foobar
, except instead of using the latest version from the index, the version specified is used. -
component. Instead of referring to an entire package and letting stack decide which components to build, you select individual components from inside a package. This can be done for more fine-grained control over which test suites to run, or to have a faster compilation cycle. There are multiple ways to refer to a specific component (provided for convenience):
packagename:comptype:compname
is the most explicit. The available comptypes areexe
,test
, andbench
.packagename:compname
allows you to leave off the component type, as that will (almost?) always be redundant with the component name. For example,stack build mypackage:mytestsuite
.:compname
is a useful shortcut, saying "find the component in all of the local packages." This will result in an error if multiple packages have a component with the same name. To continue the above example,stack build :mytestsuite
.- Side note: the commonly requested
run
command is not available because it's a simple combination ofstack build :exename && stack exec exename
- Side note: the commonly requested
-
directory, e.g.
stack build foo/bar
, will find all local packages that exist in the given directory hierarchy and then follow the same procedure as passing in package names as mentioned above. There's an important caveat here: if your directory name is parsed as one of the above target types, it will be treated as that. Explicitly starting your target with./
can be a good way to avoid that, e.g.stack build ./foo
Finally: if you provide no targets (e.g., running stack build
), stack will
implicitly pass in all of your local packages. If you only want to target
packages in the current directory or deeper, you can pass in .
, e.g. stack
build .
.
To get a list of the available targets in your project, use stack ide targets
.
Controlling what gets built¶
Stack will automatically build the necessary dependencies. See the build command section of the user guide for details of how these dependencies get specified.
In addition to specifying targets, you can also control what gets built with the following flags:
-
--haddock
, to build documentation. This may cause a lot of packages to get re-built, so that the documentation links work. -
--force-dirty
, to force rebuild of packages even when it doesn't seem necessary based on file dirtiness. -
--reconfigure
, to force reconfiguration even when it doesn't seem necessary based on file dirtiness. This is sometimes useful with custom Setup.hs files, in particular when they depend on external data files. -
--dry-run
, to build nothing and output information about the build plan. -
--only-dependencies
, to skip building the targets. -
--only-snapshot
, to only build snapshot dependencies, which are cached and shared with other projects. -
--keep-going
, to continue building packages even after some build step fails. The packages which depend upon the failed build won't get built.
Flags¶
There are a number of other flags accepted by stack build
. Instead of listing
all of them, please use stack build --help
. Some particularly convenient ones
worth mentioning here since they compose well with the rest of the build system
as described:
--file-watch
will rebuild your project every time a file changes--exec "cmd [args]"
will run a command after a successful build
To come back to the composable approach described above, consider this final example (which uses the wai repository:
stack build --file-watch --test --copy-bins --haddock wai-extra :warp warp:doctest --exec 'echo Yay, it worked!'
This command will:
- Start stack up in file watch mode, waiting for files in your project to change. When first starting, and each time a file changes, it will do all of the following.
- Build the wai-extra package and its test suites
- Build the
warp
executable - Build the warp package's doctest component (which, as you may guess, is a test site)
- Run all of the wai-extra package's test suite components and the doctest test suite component
- If all of that succeeds:
- Copy generated executables to the local bin path
- Run the command
echo Yay, it worked!
Build output¶
When building a single target package (e.g., stack build
in a project with
only one package, or stack build package-name
in a multi-package project),
the build output from GHC will be hidden for building all dependencies, and
will be displayed for the one target package.
By default, when building multiple target packages, the output from these will
end up in a log file instead of on the console unless it contains errors or
warnings, to avoid problems of interleaved output and decrease console noise.
If you would like to see this content instead, you can use the --dump-logs
command line option, or add dump-logs: all
to your stack.yaml
file.