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On ubuntu I currently have haskell-platform 2011.2.0.1.2 installed, and I
am currently working on some code where it would be very nice to have
Control.Concurrent.Chan be an instance of Eq. Unfortunately, in
base-4.3.1.0, which is the one I have installed, it is not, but in
base-4.4.0.0 Chan is an instance of Eq.
Would it be possible to update base, maybe by sandboxing it with cabal-dev or any
other method, in a way that would not break too many packages?
No, you should never upgrade
base. It’s one of the boot packages — the packages that GHC itself needs to build, and ships with — and upgrading them will lead to Very Bad Things™. (Here’s a full list of boot packages; everything with a-in thetagcolumn is one. Don’t upgrade these!)Indeed, cabal-install’s
cabal upgradefeature was removed precisely because it had a nasty tendency to upgrade boot packages.Not only is it a boot package, but being such core functionality, it’s pretty much inherently tied to a specific GHC version. Your best option is to install the corresponding newer version of GHC in a local directory.