Failing to install Haskell uniplate library

Question

I am trying to install Elm and the instructions are to install Haskell and then

sh> cabal update
sh> cabal install cabal-install
sh> cabal install -j Elm elm-repl elm-reactor elm-get

When I do, the cabal-install installation installs text-1.2.0.0 which conflicts with the text-1.1.0.0 which uniplate requires so uniplate and its dependents fail to install. Text-1.1.0.0 is installed and present but is rejected in favour of text-1.2.0.0, even though the target needs text-1.1.0.0.

Is there a way to insist that cabal use text-1.1.0.0? Is there a way to get text-1.1.0.0 and text-1.2.0.0 to co-exist? Is there a way to convince uniplate that it can accept text-1.2.0.0? Or a way to make uniplate (or cabal) believe that version text-1.1.0.0 is actually installed? Would that even work?

When I explicitly try to install version 1.1.0.0 of text, I am told that a reinstall would break other packages. Apparently it is a downgrade and not a co-installation. cabal does not seem to have an option to allow to me install two versions of the same library at the same time.

If I uninstall Haskell and all the libraries and then re-install Elm (without installing cabal-install so I don't get text-1.2.0.0 installed so there is no clash), I get 100 or so lines of

package aeson-0.7.0.4-8f84b14cc682e4c9b009352420076a45 is unusable due to missing or recursive dependencies:
  attoparsec-0.10.4.0-ec2d0a330db1f6e3a6a3b79471a403ef hashable-1.2.2.0-45bd22df8c4ead6b3a7fb1d08bb07f7d mtl-2.1.3.1-8bcc0591131896cfc8761a93703d4c61 scientific-0.2.0.2-5e275f5d96527da6dc1f05642692a484 syb-0.4.1-be94ebe67c3607f5df1dfcc1906f5d5c text-1.1.0.0-9bd69e9ace700e05fb08e463086bc383 unordered-containers-0.2.4.0-69836b34d13649bcfacc8fb0c9f53e64 vector-0.10.9.1-c550551354bc7c2b5a1d261f39b2f3f4
package aeson-pretty-0.7.1-5dc26d5a4560afe110e90283479a1251 is unusable due to missing or recursive dependencies:
aeson-0.7.0.4-8f84b14cc682e4c9b009352420076a45       
text-1.1.0.0-9bd69e9ace700e05fb08e463086bc383 
unordered-containers-0.2.4.0-69836b34d13649bcfacc8fb0c9f53e64 
vector-0.10.9.1-c550551354bc7c2b5a1d261f39b2f3f4
package asn1-encoding-0.9.0-94e9066cccf7ead73bee5ae4aa982071 is unusable due to missing or recursive dependencies:
mtl-2.1.3.1-8bcc0591131896cfc8761a93703d4c61
package asn1-parse-0.9.0-af4efc4777a8a0d9d19a626d5e4b08ff is unusable due to missing or recursive dependencies:
asn1-encoding-0.9.0-94e9066cccf7ead73bee5ae4aa982071
mtl-2.1.3.1-8bcc0591131896cfc8761a93703d4c61 
text-1.1.0.0-9bd69e9ace700e05fb08e463086bc383

I have no idea at all how in resolve this or where to even try. Has anybody trod this path before and do you have any advice or pointers?

Thank you.

Edit Installing in a sandbox changes the outcome only by degrees: text-1.1.0.0 does not clash with text-1.1.0.0 but still can not be loaded (despite being installed) and still remains the unsatisfied dependency.

blaze-builder is first to fail with cannot satisfy -package-id text-1.1.0.0-9bd69e9ace700e05fb08e463086bc383 yet the same log earlier stated [_12] trying: text-1.1.0.0/installed-9bd... (dependency of Elm-0.13) without apparent error or complaint.

cabal list shows both text-1.1.0.0 and text-1.2.0.0 as installed.

Installing blaze-builder separately looks the same. Dependency resolution shows

[_56] trying: blaze-builder-0.3.3.4 (user goal)
[_57] next goal: text (dependency of blaze-builder-0.3.3.4)
[_57] trying: text-1.1.0.0/installed-9bd...
[_58] done

All looks good but later, same log has

<command line>: cannot satisfy -package-id text-1.1.0.0-9bd69e9ace700e05fb08e463086bc383
    (use -v for more information)

The ghc command line already had the -v flag and trying to re-run the command line copied from the log, with more -vs, gives an error with "can't find a package database at dist/dist-sandbox-ad0bcd57/package.conf.inplace".

No package.conf.inplace seems to exist.

Further edit

On the Elm install page is a link to a BuildFromSource.hs script that is also supposed to work installing Elm. In the time that it took for that script to run and fail to work, I managed to install leiningen, node, npm, grunt and Clojure. I am now further along the road to getting Clojurescript installed in about 20 minutes than I am in getting Elm installed in nearly a week.

Elm looked really interesting but it is playing way too hard to get.

Thanks again to everyone who tried to help.

* Edit *

I finally got it.

Every executable installed by the installer at http://elm-lang.org/Install.elm caused a segfault.

The "Build from source" option at the same page did not work because the dependencies either stepped all over each other or could not get themselves straight in the first place.

The ghc at http://new-www.haskell.org/downloads/osx needs a later version of Mac OS than I have. (A link to older versions would not have gone astray.)

The solution (and it is obvious in retrospect) was to port install haskell-platform and port install hs-cabal-install and cabal install Elm .... I did have to run one of those installers twice because it could not find hackage.haskell.org (How is that a 'user' error?) but my hello-world.elm now compiles.

Thank you all again.

Answer 1

It looks like some dependency issues with elements you already have installed. You will probably need to install it in a sandbox.

First, update to the latest version of cabal:

$ cabal update
$ cabal install cabal cabal-install

Next, make sure you have the installed version of cabal on your $PATH.

$ which cabal
> /path/to/cabal/bin/cabal

If it says something like /usr/bin/cabal you will need to export cabal to be on your $PATH. For me this is `/home/username/.cabal/bin

$ export PATH=/path/to/cabal/bin/cabal;$PATH

Run which cabal again and ensure it is pointing to that path.

Now that you have the latest version of cabal. Run the following:

$ mkdir elm
$ cd elm
$ cabal sandbox init

This will initialize a sandbox where dependencies are completely independent of your other installs. Within this directory, you should be able to install the elm platform by running:

$ cabal install Elm elm-repl elm-reactor elm-get

These will be installed in a sub-directory called .cabal-sanbox/bin/ For convenience, you will probably want to add this to your $PATH so you can run the executables from any directory.

Hope this helps!