What steps are required to bring haskell-platform up to date?

Question

I have just installed the haskell-platform on my system (Ubunto 12.04 if it matters). I discovered that cabal was still at version 1.14.0.0, and this was causing problems. I also have some packages (i.e. regex-base) that are current but compiled against an ancient version of the MTL library. The is problems resolving dependencies.

Could someone help me out with the steps needed to get the all the pieces of the haskell platform up to date.

Answer 1

Even if you have the Haskell Platform, you can absolutely install a newer version of cabal-install (the cabal command line program). cabal install cabal-install will place the newest version in your local cabal binaries directory, i.e. ~/.cabal/bin/cabal. In order for this to take precedence over the cabal that the Platform installed, make sure ~/.cabal/bin is at the front of your path.

What others have said is correct though. The Haskell Platform is not meant to be a rolling release, and in particular base should not be upgraded because it is tied to your version of GHC. If you find you need a newer version of a package, and it's not base, just install that one package. If you keep having issues then upgrading Ubuntu to get a newer version of GHC and/or the Platform is recommended.