I installed the 64-bit version of the recent Haskell Platform release on Mac OS X 10.6.6. $ cabal --version cabal-install version 0.10.2 using version 1.10.1.0 of the Cabal library As always in the past, and as cabal install itself has often suggested, the first thing I did was to run 'cabal install cabal-install' to make sure I have the latest version. To my surprise, cabal install began installing an *older* version of itself, together with older versions of dependent libraries to support that. I didn't really mind, because I could always just remove the symlink to the older-versioned cabal executable when it finished, so I let it run its course to avoid leaving a mess by aborting. However, after a while, the installation process failed with the message: Downloading time-1.1.4... <command line>: cannot satisfy -package Cabal-1.10.1.0: Cabal-1.10.1.0-6289829715de7a109def1f0c286a5dc4 is unusable due to missing or recursive dependencies: process-1.0.1.5-3e412eee765d141be15796c32f22f7a3 Note that process-1.0.1.5 and Cabal-1.10.1.0 are already installed globally as part of the platform. Another copy of process-1.0.1.5 had been installed in userland during this problematic run. Cabal-1.8.0.6 was also installed in userland. Why did cabal try to downgrade itself to an older version, and why did it get so confused while trying to do so? Thanks, Yitz