cabal-install upgrade

[Ben Franksen]

Hi Libraries ;-)

I have ghc-6.10.4 and many libraries installed and everything works nicely.
I'd like to upgrade my Cabal + cabal-install so I can use the new features
(especially the improved support for library plus executables in one
package).

Is this safe? I mean, do I have to fear my installation breaks if I install
Cabal-1.8.0.4? I have discovered problems when upgrading Cabal in the past
but this is quite some time ago. Also, I am confused by the output of
cabal-install regarding such an upgrade:

ben at sarun[2]: ~ > cabal --version
cabal-install version 0.6.4
using version 1.6.0.3 of the Cabal library 
ben at sarun[2]: ~ > cabal install cabal-install --dry-run
Resolving dependencies...
In order, the following would be installed (use -v for more details):
cabal-install-0.6.4
ben at sarun[2]: ~ > cabal install Cabal --dry-run        
Resolving dependencies...
In order, the following would be installed (use -v for more details):
Cabal-1.8.0.4
ben at sarun[2]: ~ > cabal list cabal-install
* cabal-install
    Synopsis: The command-line interface for Cabal and Hackage.
    Latest version available: 0.8.2
    Latest version installed: [ Not installed ]
    Homepage: http://www.haskell.org/cabal/
    License:  BSD3

So, cabal-install would upgrade Cabal from 1.6.0.3 to 1.8.0.4, but not
itself from 0.6.4 to 0.8.2. I used the -v option but it did not make clear
to me which dependencies of 0.8.2 conflict with what I have installed. And
maybe there is no conflict, since

ben at sarun[2]: ~ > cabal install cabal-install-0.8.2 --dry-run
Resolving dependencies...
In order, the following would be installed (use -v for more details):
Cabal-1.8.0.4
cabal-install-0.8.2

When I give cabal-install an explicit version number for the package to
install, does this somehow circumvent safety measures?

Thanks
Ben