Yes, really. Reference the SO post linked to; there are numerous people who had issues updating cabal-install. I've seen them referenced in /r/haskell and in Ha

Yes, really. Reference the SO post linked to; there are numerous people who had issues updating cabal-install. I've seen them referenced in /r/haskell and in Haskell documentation. The homebrew installation of haskell-platform may resolve some of these issues; I'm not familiar with it. Additionally, you're working with the knowledge that once you install Haskell Platform, you need to update cabal-install (This is not something a newcomer would expect given that they just downloaded cabal via Haskell Platform). Just getting the Platform installed is misleading as well; there's still the issue of dealing with package conflicts which happens frequently in Haskell and is non-trivial to deal with for a newcomer. Finally, using Haskell Platform at all might cause troubles; it's explicitly recommended against by the popular Getting Started guide by bitemyapp https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell because it uses the global package database.