Stack root location¶
The Stack root is a directory where Stack stores important files. The location and contents of the directory depend on the operating system, whether Stack is configured to use the XDG Base Directory Specification, and/or whether an alternative location to Stack's default 'programs' directory has been specified.
The location of the Stack root can be configured by setting the
STACK_ROOT environment variable or
using Stack's --stack-root option on the
command line.
The Stack root contains snapshot packages; (by default) tools such as GHC,
in a programs directory; Stack's global
YAML configuration file
(config.yaml); and Stack's
global-projects directory.
The default Stack root is ~/.stack.
The Stack root contains snapshot packages; Stack's global
YAML configuration file
(config.yaml); and Stack's
global-projects directory. The
default location of tools such as GHC and MSYS2 is outside of the Stack
root.
The default Stack root is %APPDIR%\stack.
If the LOCALAPPDATA environment variable exists, the default location of
tools is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\stack. Otherwise, it is the programs
directory in the Stack root.
Warning
If there is a space character in the %LOCALAPPDATA% path (which may be
the case if the relevant user account name and its corresponding user
profile path have a space) this may cause problems with building
packages that make use of the GNU project's autoconf package and
configure shell script files. That may be the case particularly if
there is no corresponding short name ('8 dot 3' name) for the directory
in the path with the space (which may be the case if '8 dot 3' names
have been stripped or their creation not enabled by default). If there
are problems building, it will be necessary to override the default
location of Stack's 'programs' directory to specify an alternative path
that does not contain space characters. Examples of packages on
Hackage that make use of configure are network and process.
On Windows, the length of filepaths may be limited (to
MAX_PATH),
and things can break when this limit is exceeded. Setting a Stack root with
a short path to its location (for example, C:\sr) can help.
On Unix-like operating systems and Windows, Stack can be configured to
follow the XDG Base Directory Specification if the environment variable
STACK_XDG is set to any non-empty value. However, Stack will ignore that
configuration if the Stack root location has been set on the command line or
the STACK_ROOT environment variable exists.
If Stack is following the XDG Base Directory Specification, the Stack root
contains what it would otherwise contain for the operating system, but
Stack's global YAML configuration file (config.yaml) may be located
elsewhere.
The Stack root is <XDG_DATA_HOME>/stack. If the XDG_DATA_HOME
environment variable does not exist, the default is ~/.local/share/stack
on Unix-like operating systems and %APPDIR%\stack on Windows.
The location of config.yaml is <XDG_CONFIG_HOME>/stack. If the
XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable does not exist, the default is
~/.config/stack on Unix-like operating systems and %APPDIR%\stack on
Windows.
This approach treats:
-
the project-level YAML configuration file that is common to all projects without another such file in their project directory or its ancestor directories as data rather than as part of Stack's own configuration;
-
the snapshots database as essential data rather than as non-essential data that would be part of a cache, notwithstanding that Stack will rebuild that database as its contents are needed; and
-
the Pantry store as essential data rather than as non-essential data that would be part of a cache, notwithstanding that Stack will download the package index and rebuild the store if it is absent.
An alternative to the default location of tools such as GHC can be specified
with the local-programs-path
configuration option.
The location of the Stack root is reported by command:
The full path of Stack's global YAML configuration file is reported by command:
The location of tools such as GHC for the current platform is reported by command: