cabal update doesn't respect index-state?

[brandonchinn178]

Describe the bug
I have a cabal.project file containing

index-state:
  , hackage.haskell.org 2023-03-16T09:32:28Z
  , head.hackage 2023-02-16T05:32:02Z

but running cabal update in CI is showing:

Downloading the latest package lists from:
- hackage.haskell.org
- head.hackage.ghc.haskell.org
Package list of head.hackage.ghc.haskell.org has been updated.
The index-state is set to 2023-06-09T14:04:13Z.
Package list of hackage.haskell.org has been updated.
The index-state is set to 2023-06-17T22:28:17Z.

Is this expected?

I'm using the scripts from ghc-wasm-meta, which installs cabal-install-3.10 and this cabal.config file

[andreabedini]

Argh, that's absolutely confusing. I cannot believe I notice this only now.

cabal-install has a global index-state per repository, when you do cabal update it will tell you what is the current global index-state, which has nothing to do with what is configured in the project.

The global index-state or the one configured in the project will still be used in cabal build.

[brandonchinn178]

Also see: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/23532

[andreabedini]

Thinking about this I am wondering if we should drop the global index state entirly.
It might be worth opening a PR to see what that would look like.