Can't install packages with my inplace compiler

[Duncan Coutts]

On Wed, 2014-11-05 at 09:50 +0000, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:
> |  Actually I'd suggest you use the Cabal and cabal-install that are part
> |  of the ghc source tree, rather than Cabal/cabal-install HEAD. The two
> |  are not always the same.
> 
> Aha ok, thank you.  How exactly do I do that?  Where is the executable
> cabal-install in the tree?  IN inplace/bin I see an executable
> ghc-cabal. Is that it?
> 
> Alternatively, "Plan B" on
> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Debugging/InstallingPackagesInplace
> (which I confess I'd forgotten about) describes a different plan that
> doesn't mention cabal-install at all.  Is that better?

To follow up on a rather old thread: I included a little backwards
compatibility hack (which I think made it into RC2) so that other users
will not hit this, so that they can continue to use an old version of
cabal-install with 7.10.

For context, the error you and others were seeing was:

> ghc-stage2: ghc no longer supports single-file style package databases
> (dist/package.conf.inplace) use 'ghc-pkg init' to create the database
> with the correct format.

-- 
Duncan Coutts, Haskell Consultant
Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/