"cabal install cabal-install" is not working for me. I am not the first to find this problem; it is mentioned here https://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Cabal/Survival: "Notice, that in some cases (OS X, especially) the new cabal-install might not be installed on top of the previous one, and the old cabal-install must be replaced manually" I don't know how to manually replace Cabal. The closest thing I could find to instructions for that were here https://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2010-February/073526.html, but I don't understand them. The Haskell Platform installer is what installed Cabal for me. I have not found how to undo that, nor how to install Cabal in any other fashion. Running the Haskell Platform installer again seems dangerous, potentially conflicting with its earlier work. A likely unnecessary shell transcript demonstrating the problem appears below. I am running OS X 10.9 on a MacBook Pro, of which the decision to purchase I regret more daily. Thank you. ----- When I try to update cabal, it looks like it works: jefferys-mbp:~ jbb$ cabal install cabal-install Resolving dependencies... Configuring cabal-install-1.20.0.3... Building cabal-install-1.20.0.3... Installed cabal-install-1.20.0.3 Updating documentation index /Users/jbb/Library/Haskell/share/doc/index.html But the version number exhibits no change: jefferys-mbp:~ jbb$ cabal --version cabal-install version 1.18.0.5 using version 1.18.1.4 of the Cabal library