On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 3:56 PM,
When I change the cabal file to say preference: base >= 4 I still get, "you are using base 3.0 which is deprecated." When I change the overall cabal profile, the error message still comes up. It seems like some other part of the install process is controlling the base version, besides the *.cabal and cabal profile file.
When you run install or configure, try passing -v to see the verbose output. This can often help you see why the wrong package is picked. With base it's a bit trickier. In theory, constraints should override preferences. Base has a special thing where the preference overrides constraints when the upper bound is missing. Does the package in question have an upper bound on the version of base? Something like, base == 4.*, or base > 3 && base < 5 ? Jason