[Haskell-cafe] cabal install / upgrade (was: Re: some problem with Cabal)

[Evan Laforge]

> Generally, it shouldn't (and doesn't), but here some packages have to be
> reinstalled because they have to be built against different dependencies.
>
> I'd prefer cabal install to refuse here (overridable with a --force flag)
> because reinstalling boot libs (containers, filepath, directory, process,
> time) tends to be a bad idea.

Seconded!  I've had my setup screwed up because some package wanted to
recompile base against a tiny version bump on the random package for
whatever reason.  The presence of two bases with the same version, one
in the ghc dir and one in /usr/local/lib proceded to screw up all
kinds of things.  It took a long time to figure out because I wasn't
expecting two copies of base with the same version, and it somehow
managed to overwrite the package file in package.conf.d so the
original metadata was gone.  Eventually I gave up and reinstalled ghc.

And all I did was accidentally run cabal upgrade somepackage when I
wanted to install a newer version of somepackage.  By the time I
realized it was apparently still aliased to cabal break-everything and
hit ^C it was too late.

And it's not like I haven't been warned away from cabal upgrade
either... but it made me think, if the command is so dangerous, should
it have a scarier name?