cabal is a poet

[andreasabel]

cabal-testsuite$ cabal run all -- --help
Error: cabal: The run command is for running a single executable at once. The
target 'all' refers to all the packages in the project which includes the
executable 'cabal', the executable 'setup', the executable 'cabal-tests', the
executable 'hackage-benchmark', the test suite 'unit-tests', the test suite
'rpmvercmp', the test suite 'parser-tests', the test suite 'no-thunks-test',
the test suite 'hackage-tests', the test suite 'custom-setup-tests', the test
suite 'check-tests', the test suite 'cabal-benchmarks', the test suite
'unit-tests', the test suite 'mem-use-tests', the test suite 'long-tests', the
test suite 'integration-tests2', the test suite 'unit-tests' and the test
suite 'unit-tests'.

Beautiful!

As much as we should teach our kids to communicate in full sentences, I would like cabal to answer me in tabular form:

cabal-testsuite$ cabal run all -- --help
Error: cabal: The run command is for running a single executable at once. The
target 'all' refers to all the packages in the project which includes:
- executables: cabal, setup, cabal-tests, hackage-benchmark
- test-suites:
  * unit-tests
  * rpmvercmp
  * parser-tests
  * no-thunks-test
  * hackage-tests
  * custom-tests
  * check-tests
  * cabal-benchmarks
  * mem-use-tests
  * long-tests
  * integration-tests2

(Short lists on one line, long lists one-item-per-line, no duplicates.)
One could also drop the punctuation:

- executables: cabal setup cabal-tests hackage-benchmark
- test-suites:
    unit-tests
    rpmvercmp
    parser-tests
    no-thunks-test
    hackage-tests
    custom-tests
    check-tests
    cabal-benchmarks
    mem-use-tests
    long-tests
    integration-tests2

Current pretty-printing frameworks do support separators which end up either horizontal or vertical, depending on the length of the list.

[ulysses4ever]

I observe very similar behavior with cabal list-bin, in particular:

❯ cabal list-bin all
Error: cabal: The list-bin command is for finding a single binary at once. The
target 'all' refers to all the packages in the project which includes the test
suite 'mypkg-test-2' and the test suite 'mypkg-test'.

I wonder if #8234 could be extended for list-bin (and whether I should open a new ticket -- I just happen to love the title of this current ticket...). @mgsium, any thoughts on extending your PR to list-bin?

[mgsium]

I'd be happy to extend the PR. I see a few other uses of the old renderListCommaAnd formatting that may be worth looking at; the changes are probably simple enough not to warrant a new ticket but I'll leave it up to you.

[ulysses4ever]

Awesome! Looking forward for it! And yeah, let's reuse the ticket. I can extend the description later...