As a maintainer of the various OpenGL-related packages I have the following problem: The Haskell platform has those packages (OpenGLRaw, GLURaw, ...) exposed, which is the right thing to do in general. When I want to work on those packages, I'd like to use Cabal sandboxes to avoid screwing up the platform versions of them, but things get a bit tricky then. Consider e.g. the GLURaw package, which depends on the OpenGLRaw package. Assume that I'd like to add some stuff to the OpenGLRaw package and use that in GLURaw. With cabal sandboxes I'll have to fight a little bit, because versions of these packages are already exposed: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- svenpanne@svenpanne[master]:~/repos/haskell-packages/GLURaw$ cabal sandbox init Writing a default package environment file to /usr/local/google/home/svenpanne/repos/haskell-packages/GLURaw/cabal.sandbox.config Creating a new sandbox at /usr/local/google/home/svenpanne/repos/haskell-packages/GLURaw/.cabal-sandbox svenpanne@svenpanne[master]:~/repos/haskell-packages/GLURaw$ cabal sandbox add-source ../OpenGLRaw ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No problem so far. But the next step is not so OK: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- svenpanne@svenpanne[master]:~/repos/haskell-packages/GLURaw$ cabal install --only-dependencies Resolving dependencies... All the requested packages are already installed: Use --reinstall if you want to reinstall anyway. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hmmm, obviously cabal sees the globally exposed OpenGLRaw and ignores that I've done add-source above. OK, next try with --constraint added: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- svenpanne@svenpanne[master]:~/repos/haskell-packages/GLURaw$ cabal install --only-dependencies --constraint='OpenGLRaw source' Resolving dependencies... In order, the following would be installed: OpenGLRaw-1.5.0.0 (reinstall) cabal: The following packages are likely to be broken by the reinstalls: OpenGL-2.9.2.0 GLUT-2.5.1.1 GLURaw-1.4.0.1 Use --force-reinstalls if you want to install anyway. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Is there any documentation about --constraint? I figured that out by actually reading the cabal sources. :-/ ) Better, but still not OK, so let's add --force-reinstalls: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- svenpanne@svenpanne[master]:~/repos/haskell-packages/GLURaw$ cabal install --only-dependencies --constraint='OpenGLRaw source' --force-reinstalls Resolving dependencies... Warning: The following packages are likely to be broken by the reinstalls: OpenGL-2.9.2.0 GLUT-2.5.1.1 GLURaw-1.4.0.1 Continuing even though the plan contains dangerous reinstalls. Notice: installing into a sandbox located at /usr/local/google/home/svenpanne/repos/haskell-packages/GLURaw/.cabal-sandbox Configuring OpenGLRaw-1.5.0.0... Building OpenGLRaw-1.5.0.0... Installed OpenGLRaw-1.5.0.0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That works, so after that I could actually build/install GLURaw. So in a nutshell what I have to do is: cabal sandbox init cabal sandbox add-source ../OpenGLRaw cabal install --constraint='OpenGLRaw source' --force-reinstalls --enable-documentation --haddock-hyperlink-source And for other packages I even have to add several --constraint flags, because they depend on several locally modified packages. This seems a bit weird. Is this the recommended workflow? How do other maintainers of platform packages handle this? What one *actually* wants is hiding some of the globally exposed packages while being in the sandbox (--constraint and --force-reinstalls could go away then), but I've found no way to do that. Cheers, S.