Perhaps I can just delete it? I should probably just have asked in matrix first,
but since I searched here I thought I would post the question...

No, it is an internal tool not needed by users.

So why is it built or rather how can I stop it?

I guess this is a bug report then :-)

The only executables you need are haskell-language-server and haskell-language-server-wrapper. I guess you just want to instruct your build system to build those explicitly.

I would still prefer if I could just cabal install and get the needed executables.
Couldn't the ghcide-bench executable be put behind a flag?
That feels the right thing to do?

I don't see any particular reason why we should insist on cabal install <package> doing what you want rather than cabal install <package>:<executable>?

So, installing from hackage can (only?) be done via cabal install haskell-language-server which does build and install ghcide-bench executable.

In particular, you definitely can't run cabal install exe:haskell-language-server or cabal install haskell-language-server:exe:haskell-language-server.

That's indeed more annoying than necessary, imo.

I think it should be possible to disable ghcide-bench by default, but to allow cabal install exe:ghcide-bench without further configuration using an automatic cabal flag that's false by default. Doesn't seem to quite work as we want it to.