diff --git a/shake/nofib-run.cabal b/shake/nofib-run.cabal
index 86295245ad80199a7c35e6493652df83afc7c41b..be70452a32d7f3cbaf1d748a2c0d59917bb8ba87 100644
--- a/shake/nofib-run.cabal
+++ b/shake/nofib-run.cabal
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ library
   exposed-modules:     Measurements
   ghc-options:         -Wall
   hs-source-dirs:      src
-  build-depends:       base >=4.5 && <4.16,
+  build-depends:       base >=4.5 && <4.17,
                        aeson,
                        these >= 0.8,
                        containers,
@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ executable nofib-run
     , DeriveDataTypeable
     , BangPatterns
     , ScopedTypeVariables
-  build-depends:       base >=4.5 && <4.16,
+  build-depends:       base >=4.5 && <4.17,
                        time >=1.4 && <1.10,
                        containers,
                        bytestring,
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ executable nofib-compare
   ghc-options:         -Wall
   other-modules:       LabelMatch
   other-extensions:    RecordWildCards, DeriveDataTypeable
-  build-depends:       base >=4.5 && <4.16,
+  build-depends:       base >=4.5 && <4.17,
                        these,
                        containers,
                        directory,
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ executable nofib-compare
 executable nofib-merge
   main-is:             Merge.hs
   ghc-options:         -Wall
-  build-depends:       base >=4.5 && <4.16,
+  build-depends:       base >=4.5 && <4.17,
                        optparse-applicative,
                        cassava,
                        bytestring,
diff --git a/shake/runner/Main.hs b/shake/runner/Main.hs
index 326440ff1f536cd1998d5ca640ac4b17bbf9f1f7..6625ad7e75e71874886f10a964bd8a09e400069f 100644
--- a/shake/runner/Main.hs
+++ b/shake/runner/Main.hs
@@ -45,8 +45,13 @@ ml = Ms.mkLabel
 
 -- | These are directories that we look into for tests by default.
 testRoots :: [String]
-testRoots = words "imaginary spectral real shootout parallel smp"
-            -- Note that we don't run the gc tests by default.
+testRoots = words "imaginary spectral real shootout"
+            -- Note that we don't run the gc smp and parallel tests by default.
+            -- See #24 for some of the reasoning. The short version is that they are not very
+            -- stable run to run and are more sensitive to system load. So more care has to be
+            -- taken to properly run these.
+            -- Currently we value benchmark stability higher than including these in the default set
+            -- therefore we skip these by default.
 
 defaultNoFibHcOpts :: [String]
 defaultNoFibHcOpts = words "-O2 -Wno-tabs"