Failure to locate binary while installing cabal-helper

[dniku]

$ stack install cabal-helper
...
Couldn't find executable cabal-helper-wrapper in directory <project-directory>/.stack-work/install/x86_64-linux/lts-8.5/8.0.2/bin/

$ find -name '*cabal-helper*'
...
./.stack-work/install/x86_64-linux/lts-8.13/8.0.2/libexec/x86_64-linux-ghc-8.0.2/cabal-helper-0.7.3.0/cabal-helper-wrapper
...

Steps to reproduce:

1. git clone https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-sl.git
2. cd cardano-sl
3. stack install cabal-helper

Output on my machine (with --verbose flag): https://gist.github.com/Pastafarianist/8ed6eec3f0d891e1fdb2def97c8a5187

See also DanielG/cabal-helper#28 (a mirror of this issue in the cabal-helper repository).

Stack version

I am using stack-1.3.2 (because of #3151) which I installed from the Arch repository (sudo pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/s/stack/stack-1.3.2-64-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz). My stack --version.

[snoyberg]

This appears to be due to very special logic in the Setup.hs file for cabal-helper, which prevents the cabal-helper-wrapper executable from being copied to the appropriate directory. There are potential workarounds in Stack, but overall the metadata we're able to read from the .cabal file is simply misleading in this case. I'd recommend just using the stack build command instead of stack install.

[mgsloan]

Closing as a support issue.