new-install symlink location

[fgaz]

Currently new-install errors out without additional flags because it uses symlink-bindir as symlink location, which is unset by default. I actually am not sure what that flag was supposed to do originally (can someone clarify? Is the current behavior the intended one?).

After some digging I found that bindir is the only flag that is automatically set to ~/.cabal/bin in the config file.

Now there are two courses of action:

1. set symlink-bindir to ~/.cabal/bin and equivalents on config creation
2. use bindir instead

The downside of (1) is that existing configurations will not have that flag set and will give an error. edit: well, I just discovered cabal user-config update
The downside of (2) is that the bindir flag serves an obvious purpose for packagers, and using it for the symlink and not the executable violates that.

I think (1) is the correct one, maybe with a default to address the empty flag problem, but I'd like to hear some opinions first.

We should also document symlink-bindir here

[23Skidoo]

Congrats on the 5000 get, by the way.

[ezyang]

(1) seems OK to me, esp if the error message when it is unset explains how to unwedge your config.

[fgaz]

@dcoutts you seem to be the author of symlink-bindir 2eddc49

Is the first option here correct?

[angerman]

I'm in favor of (1) as well.

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Wow, 2eddc49 is almost 10 years old!