So as far as I can tell, it's easy to fix the cabal sdist bug. The module that generates a distribution simply has to use insntallOrdinaryFile when copying files, not the version of copyFile that is exported by Distribution.Simple.Util. I'll respond to the open ticket with this patch later today. John $ diff -ur ocabal-1.8 cabal-1.8 Only in cabal-1.8: .darcs-boring diff -ur ocabal-1.8/Distribution/Simple/SrcDist.hs cabal-1.8/Distribution/Simple/SrcDist.hs --- ocabal-1.8/Distribution/Simple/SrcDist.hs 2010-12-01 11:16:00.629309262 -0500 +++ cabal-1.8/Distribution/Simple/SrcDist.hs 2010-12-01 11:18:37.449933651 -0500 @@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ ( Version(versionBranch) ) import Distribution.Simple.Utils ( createDirectoryIfMissingVerbose, withUTF8FileContents, writeUTF8File - , copyFiles, copyFileVerbose + , installOrdinaryFile, installOrdinaryFiles , findFile, findFileWithExtension, matchFileGlob , withTempDirectory, defaultPackageDesc , die, warn, notice, setupMessage ) @@ -341,6 +341,12 @@ createDirectoryIfMissingVerbose verbosity True (takeDirectory targetFile) copyFileVerbose verbosity file targetFile +copyFileVerbose :: Verbosity -> FilePath -> FilePath -> IO () +copyFileVerbose = installOrdinaryFile + +copyFiles :: Verbosity -> FilePath -> [(FilePath, FilePath)] -> IO () +copyFiles = installOrdinaryFiles + printPackageProblems :: Verbosity -> PackageDescription -> IO () printPackageProblems verbosity pkg_descr = do ioChecks <- checkPackageFiles pkg_descr "." $