Option for location of programs installed by setup

[mgsloan]

See this stack overflow question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36831051/changing-stacks-storage-directory-on-windows

Relevant code here:

stack/src/Stack/Config.hs

Line 266 in 6f7871b

configLocalProgramsBase <-

It isn't as big of a deal on linux, because it's just based on your stack root location. However, even there, it could be handy to put the ghc installations elsewhere. I'm thinking this could be useful for travis, because it doesn't make very much sense to cache installed ghc versions (and instead use apt or stack setup-ed versions)

[diagprov]

Hi Michael,

How would a solution to this look ideally? I.e. "install for everyone or just me" type installer change, or config file, or detected based on install path?

Thanks, Antony

[mgsloan]

I'm imagining that it would be part of the portion of stack.yaml configuration which can be put in your global stack.yaml config. Something like setup-install-path: ...

[ndmitchell]

On Windows this goes in the user area, which is on the C: drive. It is common in large organisations for the C: drive to be tiny or slow, and a secondary D: drive to be provided where things like a downloaded GHC/Mingw should live. This option is critically important for that.

However, I'm actually slightly surprised that stack wanted something and didn't just reuse STACK_ROOT. I think of the as the stack playground, so I don't see why it should stray out of that.

[mgsloan]

This is actually now resolved, as there is a local-programs-path configuration option. See #1644 / #2766

[ndmitchell]

Thanks! I actually had a follow up question on how to use it, but I've taken that to StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/42496155/set-local-programs-path-relative-to-stack-root