So it embarrasses me to admit it, but I'm having the same problem I always have when I install a new ghc, and that's cabal and cabal install. I downloaded the latest cabal-install from http://hackage.haskell.org/package/cabal-install and that was a mistake right off. After fiddling around I figured out I apparently need the one bundled with ghc... and sure enough, the source version has a cabal-install-0.13.3. This one has newer but also has out of date dependencies: Configuring cabal-install-0.13.3... Setup.hs: At least the following dependencies are missing: Cabal >=1.13.3 && <1.14, base >=2.0 && <2.2, filepath >=1.0 && <1.3, time >=1.1 && <1.3, But shouldn't cabal-install be updated for the version of ghc it's with? I cloned branch 7.4 and did a ./sync-all pull so I should have the latest version, right? And how are other people testing this out if cabal-install has out of date dependencies? And strangest, why is the 'base' dependency so old? And while I'm wondering about cabal, why on earth is it that so many Setup.hs files are actually Setup.lhs and with no actual literate contents? Oh, and before I could have any of those problems, the binary distribution itself didn't want to install: it was evidently compiled against libgmp3 and archlinux is now installing libgmp5 with no option to downgrade (though oddly it calls it .10 in the so file). I tracked down an old libgmp and install with tar since arch doesn't seem to want more than one libgmp installed simultaneously. I don't know how many other linuxes out there do this, but I know I'm not the only archlinux using haskell user.