bingo...
i had to install the "ghc-ghc" and "ghc-ghc-devel" packages (at first I
installed only "ghc-ghc" and that wasn't enough". Now it's building and I'm
pretty sure it will go through.
Thank God for this mailing list, I could never find this out on my own.
Thank you!
Emmanuel
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 10:13 PM, Andres Loeh
$ ghc-pkg list ghc /usr/lib64/ghc-7.4.1/package.conf.d /home/emmanuel/.ghc/x86_64-linux-7.4.1/package.conf.d
Aha. Is there something like a ghc-ghc package available on Fedora? Perhaps you need a ghc-ghc-dev as well, I don't know. I'm somewhat surprised that these aren't installed by default: strictly speaking, the HP contains GHC itself, and installing the HP should install GHC with all the core libraries.
Cabal is confused here because "ghc" is a package internal to GHC which isn't available on Hackage, so if it's not installed together with GHC, then Cabal has absolutely no info about it. Nevertheless, it should quit with a meaningful message.
Cheers, Andres