how to use "cabal configure" / Setup.hs for local buildling?

I'm trying to work around another bug with the regular cabal install ( help with cabal install package shadowing errors ). When I try to run Setup.hs after using cabal to unpack a package (in this case, monadiccp), I get dependency errors.

monadiccp-0.7.0&开发者_如何学运维gt; cabal configure  
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring monadiccp-0.7.0...
cabal: At least the following dependencies are missing:
monatron -any

This happens with the above command, runghc Setup.py --user, --global, etc. Do I need to use the --package-db flag, and if so, what are its semantics?

Thanks in advance.

edit

So sorry, I can't believe I forgot to mention, monatron is indeed installed.

/home/gatoatigrado/.ghc/x86_64-linux-7.0.4/package.conf.d
   HTTP-4000.1.1
   HUnit-1.2.2.3
   MaybeT-0.1.2
   Monatron-0.3.1

---

I would recommend using cabal-dev to sidestep the bug with cabal install. If you still need to install dependencies first instead of having cabal-dev install do it all in one go, run cabal-dev install --only-dependencies.