diff --git a/pkgs/development/haskell-modules/configuration-common.nix b/pkgs/development/haskell-modules/configuration-common.nix
index aeb09d4ad603..3a3928f56180 100644
--- a/pkgs/development/haskell-modules/configuration-common.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/haskell-modules/configuration-common.nix
@@ -15,6 +15,12 @@ with import ./lib.nix { inherit pkgs; };
 
 self: super: {
 
+  # This used to be a core package provided by GHC, but then the compiler
+  # dropped it. We define the name here to make sure that old packages which
+  # depend on this library still evaluate (even though they won't compile
+  # successfully with recent versions of the compiler).
+  bin-package-db = null;
+
   # Some Hackage packages reference this attribute, which exists only in the
   # GHCJS package set. We provide a dummy version here to fix potential
   # evaluation errors.