On 20 June 2012 18:22, Oliver Batchelor wrote:

Check the error given by cairo.

cabal install cairo-0.12.3.1

Well, it wasn't cairo that was the problem but ...

You probably need to put the .cabal/bin  in your PATH, so that the tools such as c2hs can run.

... indeed, adding .cabal/bin to my PATH allowed the install to finish successfully. Why doesn't cabal abort when a package fails to install? Why doesn't it die if .cabal/bin isn't on the PATH? (Surely, that's easy to test for?)