elm writes to HOME

[sjmackenzie]

So when using elm-make on nixos I get an error: elm-make: /homeless-shelter: createDirectory: permission denied (Permission denied)

This means elm-make is writing to $HOME and nix specifically doesn't allow this so it makes the problem obvious by throwing a homeless-shelter error.

Ideally one could pass a --home arg to elm-make which allows one to override the $HOME.

For more info see this issue: elm-lang/elm-make#93
See the corresponding issue for elm-repl: elm-lang/elm-repl#109

[evancz]

In the upcoming version of things, we will use the code here to manage any cached files. So if you set ELM_HOME to something, you can put the information wherever you want.

[dunnl]

What is the current status of this? The link above is broken and I can't find what it was referring to. Also note this issue #280 about elm-stuff.

It seems like the elm commands should accept command-line overrides or even a configuration file to set these values. That would help it play nicely with systems like Nix. There are already dependencies on optparse-applicative and aeson so this wouldn't be a major change.

If a consensus forms I'd be glad to contribute.