Cannot compile with Cabal-1.22

[amigalemming]

With GHC-7.4.2 I get

[1 of 1] Compiling Main             ( /tmp/cabal-tmp-15698/base-noprelude-4.5.1.0/dist/setup/setup.hs, /tmp/cabal-tmp-15698/base-noprelude-4.5.1.0/dist/setup/Main.o )
Linking /tmp/cabal-tmp-15698/base-noprelude-4.5.1.0/dist/setup/setup ...
setup: base-noprelude cannot be built with Cabal versions newer than 1.20
(`Setup.hs` imported Cabal library version 1.22.4.0)
Failed to install base-noprelude-4.5.1.0

Similar result for GHC-7.8.4.

[hvr]

That's because for pre-7.10 I avoid boilerplate via Setup.hs, which in turns depends on a specific Cabal API.

With Cabal 1.24 we will finally be able to specify build-dependencies for the Setup.hs script.

Since you're already using Cabal 1.22 which is newer than the Cabal version bundled with GHC 7.107.8, I suppose you'll have no problems updating to Cabal 1.24 when it comes out?

[hvr]

@amigalemming btw, you could try to ghc hide Cabal-1.22.4.0 (for pre GHC 7.10s) as a local workaround

[amigalemming]

On Sun, 3 Jan 2016, Herbert Valerio Riedel wrote:

Since you're already using Cabal 1.22 which is newer than the Cabal
version bundled with GHC 7.10, I suppose you'll have to noproblems
updating to Cabal 1.24 when it comes out?

My only problem is to wait for Cabal-1.24. :-)

[Blaisorblade]

Cabal 1.24 is out! Shouldn't the build now have, for correct semantics,

-cabal-version:       >=1.10
+cabal-version:       >=1.24

OTOH, I understand that users of Cabal 1.20 and older versions are better served with the current Cabal file... so maybe you just want to suggest 1.22 users to upgrade cabal-install to 1.24 in the compilation error?

Now, I came across this package because this dependency is not yet supported in Stack, and I'm figuring out how to fix this scenario.

[hvr]

@Blaisorblade this is a bit of a gray area. custom-setup was designed to be usable as a backward-compatible annotation that could be retrofitted (via .cabal-revisions) in cabal-version: 1.10 cabal files to direct newer cabal versions to make better choices (this is especially important with new-build which is more liberal when solving for setup-depends), while older cabal versions ignore custom-setup but have still a good chance to succeed linking against supported versions of the deps. Usually this is the case for base-noprelude, as it's uncommon (but not impossible) to have a newer major version of Cabal than the version bundled with GHC.

There's also that technical debt in older cabal versions which made it cope badly with newer specified cabal-versions than supported. So setting a higher cabal-version should only be done when the features we're depending on are "mandatory" (which is the gray area in the case at hand).

[Blaisorblade]

Makes sense, and 1.22 users at least get an error.