This package provides an executable which reads from stdin and outputs the same thing to stdout, except that any lines which look like package identifiers (e.g. foo-0.3.2) are highlighted: red if the version is less than the version on Hackage, green if equal, or cyan if greater. In addition, when the versions are unequal the Hackage version is shown in blue.

In particular, it can be useful to pipe the output of cabal(-dev) install --dry-run through this program, to aid in checking the install plan. It's usually a good idea to understand why an outdated package is being installed; otherwise it can indicate that something needs to be updated.

PLEASE NOTE that highlight-versions does not actually consult Hackage, but rather your local index of Hackage cached by cabal. You must call 'cabal update' to be sure that highlight-versions has access to the latest information about package versions on Hackage.