At Herbert's request, I'm splitting off this part of the PVP proposal I made[1] to its own separate proposal. Same discussion period of three weeks. The proposal is: Upper bounds should not be included on non-upgradeable packages, such as base and template-haskell (are there others?). Alternatively, we should establish some accepted upper bound on these packages, e.g. many people place base < 5 on their code. The purpose (elaborated in my blog post[2]) is that these upper bounds virtually never provide for a successful build. Instead, they are purely about what error messages the user receives. With this change: * Some build plans that would have previously been impossible are now possible, without resorting to the nuclear option of --allow-newers. * Instead of cabal version bound error messages, users get GHC compiler errors that can be fed back upstream to help get packages fixed more expediently. Downsides I'm aware of: * If you consider the cabal error messages more user friendly, then the error message quality goes down. * Users may find out later than they do right now about a failing build. [1] http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2014-April/022529.html [2] http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2014/04/proposal-changes-pvp