It should just work with the --user option, so we'll need more details. What ghc version are you using exactly?
6.8.3.
If it's ghc-6.8.x, is the file for the user package db reported by ghc-pkg list correct? What is the output of ghc-pkg list?
/usr/lib/ghc-6.8.3/package.conf: Cabal-1.2.4.0, Cabal-1.6.0.1, HUnit-1.2.0.0, array-0.1.0.0, base-3.0.2.0, binary-0.4.4, bytestring-0.9.0.1.1, containers-0.1.0.2, directory-1.0.0.1, filepath-1.1.0.0, (ghc-6.8.3), haskell98-1.0.1.0, hpc-0.5.0.1, html-1.0.1.1, mtl-1.1.0.2, old-locale-1.0.0.0, old-time-1.0.0.0, packedstring-0.1.0.0, parsec-2.1.0.0, pretty-1.0.0.0, process-1.0.0.1, random-1.0.0.0, readline-1.0.1.0, regex-base-0.93.1, regex-compat-0.92, regex-posix-0.93.2, rts-1.0, template-haskell-2.2.0.0, time-1.1.2.0, unix-2.3.0.1 /home/lars/dev/mhailist/release/package.conf: binary-0.4.2, dlist-0.4.1 The required but not found dependency is dlist-0.4.1. It looks to me as if cabal isn't parsing the second part of the output (the one from the user repository). If I require the specific version of binary in there, it also complains that it wasn't able to find it. Lars