Getting Haskell's hsenv to work on Ubuntu 13

Question

I'm trying to get GHC working on Ubuntu. Did the following:

sudo apt-get install ghc sudo apt-get install cabal-install cabal update cabal install hsenv 

Then I tried to create a hsenv environment and got the following:

xx@xx-VirtualBox:~/scm/t1$ hsenv Creating Virtual Haskell directory structure Installing GHC Initializing GHC Package database at /home/xx/scm/t1/.hsenv/ghc_pkg_db Copying necessary packages from original GHC package database   Failed to copy optional package ghc-binary from system's GHC:      /usr/bin/ghc-pkg process failed with status 1   Using user-wide (~/.cabal/packages) Hackage download cache directory Installing cabal config at /home/xx/scm/t1/.hsenv/cabal/config Installing activate script Installing cabal wrapper using /home/xx/scm/t1/.hsenv/cabal/config at /home/xx/scm/t1/.hsenv/bin/cabal Skipping 'cabal update' step, Hackage download cache already downloaded   to ~/.cabal/packages/. You can update it manually with 'cabal update'   (from inside or outside the virtual environment). 

The key message being here:

Failed to copy optional package ghc-binary from system's GHC:

How do I resolve this problem? It seems to be the only impediment at the moment.

Answer 1

It is a hsenvs bug arising from this line. It seems, in recent GHC versions this package was renamed to binary.

But hsenv is an obsolete projects anyways, it is recommended to use new cabal-install or stack.