What does "shared" mean in ~/.cabal/config?

Question

I guess that "shared" will make cabal install faster, right ? The default value of shared is False. Should we use True or False for shared ?

thanks!

Answer 1

It means "also build dynamically-linked (aka shared) versions of libraries that are installed with cabal install".

$ cabal help install | grep shared
    --enable-shared                Enable Shared library
    --disable-shared               Disable Shared library

By default, only statically-linked versions are built. So it won't make cabal install libfoo faster - on the contrary, building libfoo will take more time.