7. Cabal file format changelog

7.1. Changes in 2.4

• Wildcard matching has been expanded. All previous wildcard expressions are still valid; some will match strictly more files than before. Specifically:
  • Double-star (**) wildcards are now accepted for recursive matching immediately before the final slash; they must be followed by a filename wildcard (e.g., foo/**/*.html is valid; foo/**/bar/*.html and foo/**/**/*.html, foo/**/bar.html are all invalid). As ** was an error in globs before, this does not affect any existing .cabal files that previously worked.
  • Wildcards now match when the pattern’s extensions form a suffix of the candidate file’s extension, rather than requiring strict equality (e.g., previously *.html did not match foo.en.html, but now it does).
• License fields use identifiers from SPDX License List version 3.2 2018-07-10

7.2. cabal-version: 2.2

• New common stanzas and import pseudo-field added.
• New library:virtual-modules field added.
• New cxx-sources and cxx-options fields added for suppporting bundled foreign routines implemented in C++.
• New asm-sources and asm-options fields added for suppporting bundled foreign routines implemented in assembler.
• New extra-bundled-libraries field for specifying additional custom library objects to be installed.
• Extended if control structure with support for elif keyword.
• Changed default rules of build-type field to infer “build-type:” for “Simple”/”Custom” automatically.
• license field syntax changed to require SPDX expression syntax (using SPDX license list version 3.0 2017-12-28).
• Allow redundant leading or trailing commas in package fields (which require commas) such as build-depends.

7.3. cabal-version: 2.0

• New library:signatures and mixins fields added for supporting Backpack_.
• New build-tool-depends field added for adding build-time dependencies of executable components.
• New custom-setup:autogen-modules field added for declaring modules which are generated at build time.
• Support for new PVP caret-style version operator (^>=) added to build-depends.
• Add support for new foreign-library stanza.
• Add support for internal library stanzas.
• New CPP Macro CURRENT_PACKAGE_VERSION.

7.4. cabal-version: 1.24

• New custom-setup stanza and custom-setup:setup-depends field added for specifying dependencies of custom Setup.hs scripts.
• CPP Macros VERSION_$pkgname and MIN_VERSION_$pkgname are now also generated for the current package.
• New CPP Macros CURRENT_COMPONENT_ID and CURRENT_PACKAGE_KEY.
• New extra-framework-dirs field added for specifying extra locations to find OS X frameworks.

7.5. cabal-version: 1.22

• New library:reexported-modules field.
• Support for -none version constraint added to build-depends.
• New license type ISC added.

7.6. cabal-version: 1.20

• Add support for new license-files field for declaring multiple license documents.
• New CPP Macro MIN_TOOL_VERSION_$buildtool.
• New license types BSD2 and MPL-2.0 added.

7.7. cabal-version: 1.18

• Add support for new extra-doc-files field for specifying extra file assets referenced by the Haddock documentation.
• New license type AGPL and AGPL-3 added.
• Add support for specifying a C/C++/obj-C source file in executable:main-is field.
• Add getSysconfDir operation to Paths_ API.

7.8. cabal-version: 1.16

Todo

this needs to be researched; there were only few changes between 1.12 and 1.18;

7.9. cabal-version: 1.12

• Change syntax of cabal-version to support the new recommended cabal-version: x.y style