It was exactly the clang cpp issue. Since I didn't know what I was doing, I reinstalled GHC telling it to use cpphs (at Carter's suggestion), and that worked.

Thanks!

On Jul 13, 2014, at 7:35, Mark Lentczner <mark.lentczner@gmail.com> wrote:

If this is happening on OS X and your computer is really clang (gcc -version will say clang somewhere)....

... then please try this simple fix: Edit the compiler settings file, find the line with "Haskell CPP Flags", and add -P to the list of flags.

If that works, then the upcoming Haskell Platform release will take care of doing this, no need to hack this into cabal.