diff --git a/happstack-helpers.cabal b/happstack-helpers.cabal
--- a/happstack-helpers.cabal
+++ b/happstack-helpers.cabal
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 Name: happstack-helpers
-Version: 0.54
+Version: 0.56
 License: BSD3
 License-file: bsd3.txt
 Description: Functions I found I was using repeatedly when programming Happstack based web-apps.
@@ -37,6 +37,11 @@
   Build-Depends: mtl 
                , happstack-server >= 0.3 && < 0.6
                , hscolour >= 1.0 && < 1.14
+               -- without this, on installing patchtag, cabal claims happstack helpers requires
+               -- HSH version incompatible with patchtag. even though happstack helpers
+               -- doesn't appear to use hsh anywhere. so this HSH dependency is an evil hack
+               -- to work around cabal bug.
+               , HSH <2 
                , filepath >= 1.1.0.0 && < 1.2.0.0
                , directory >= 1.0.0.0 && < 1.1.0.0
                , bytestring >= 0.9.0.0 && < 0.10.0.0
@@ -58,5 +63,5 @@
                , network >= 2.2
                , HTTP >= 4000
                , utf8-string >= 0.3.4 && < 0.4.0
-               , text >= 0.7 && < 0.11
+               , text >= 0.7 
   ghc-options: -Wall