What is a "sandbox" in the context of cabal?

[Martinsos]

I saw cabal sandboxed mentioned multiple times when googling about cabal, mostly on SO or reddit.

Since I haven't seen that term in the cabal docs, I thought maybe it is something from the older cabal, or maybe I just missed it.

I then searched for "sandbox" in https://cabal.readthedocs.io/, and it found 3 occurences (https://cabal.readthedocs.io/en/latest/search.html?q=sandbox&check_keywords=yes&area=default), however all of them just mention sandbox as if it is understood what it means and what it is, and there is no explanation as to what is actually a sandbox in the context of cabal.

I am guessing that sandbox as a feature doesn't exist anymore and the parts of the docs that mention it need to be updated to not mention it anymore? Or are we supposed to understand what sandbox means but it isn't in the current version of the docs?

Thanks!

[Mikolaj]

Yes, you are right, sandboxes were irrevocably removed and any mentions about them should be updated to speak about new-build (which replicates most of the functionality, albeit differently) or completely removed.

[Martinsos]

Thanks, that clears it up!
I would make the PR myself if I felt I had enough knowledge to do the changes, but I don't yet as the affected docs cover quite a few intersecting concepts (new-build, nix, multiple packages, ...).

[ivanperez-keera]

@Martinsos Although the command as such is removed (and therefore the docs are inconsistent), the feature is still useful and there's an open issue to try, in some way, to bring it back under a different combination of commands and flags.

See: #7682