assuming that ghc 6.8.2 is not too far away, is there any chance of cabal becoming a bit friendlier wrt old .cabal and Setup files, before that release? you've heard me say before that i'd have preferred a backwards compatibility module, but if that isn't possible, couldn't cabal at least detect that a .cabal file is probably outdated (==not obviously up to date), and issue a warning with a helpful url? something like: $ runhaskell Setup configure *** warning: this .cabal/Setup file might be out of date; *** if you run into issues, please contact the *** package maintainer, and have a look at *** http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Upgrading_packages .. (either it works or you get errors here, but you already know something is not quite right, and what to do about it) btw, i knew that page existed, but had quite a bit of trouble finding it. shouldn't there be prominent links to it from cabal and hackage home pages? as in: concerning recent cabal updates (look here first if you have trouble with old .cabal packages). in the longer term, that could become the start of a cabal/hackage faq section.. claus