diff --git a/cabal-testsuite/README.md b/cabal-testsuite/README.md
index de9826ec439a4807a66920f49f279b40a78e9900..4b6643eec56c7b0e9b25d1064406ca08ceea79c9 100644
--- a/cabal-testsuite/README.md
+++ b/cabal-testsuite/README.md
@@ -7,8 +7,8 @@ How to run
 1. Build `cabal-testsuite` (`cabal build cabal-testsuite:cabal-tests`)
 2. Run the `cabal-tests` executable. It will scan for all tests
    in your current directory and subdirectories and run them.
-   To run a specific set of tests, use `cabal-tests PATH ...`.
-   (e.g. `cabal run cabal-testsuite:cabal-tests -- cabal-testsuite/PackageTests/TestOptions/setup.test.hs`)
+   To run a specific set of tests, use `cabal-tests --with-cabal=CABALBIN PATH ...`.
+   (e.g. `cabal run cabal-testsuite:cabal-tests -- --with-cabal=cabal cabal-testsuite/PackageTests/TestOptions/setup.test.hs`)
    You can control parallelism using the `-j` flag.
 
 There are a few useful flags:
diff --git a/cabal-testsuite/src/Test/Cabal/Monad.hs b/cabal-testsuite/src/Test/Cabal/Monad.hs
index 7283f18af1b2c1bdc6458de365bb8737bb80c9b6..078351723c03330dd52c9f4b8949c2c8b510d06d 100644
--- a/cabal-testsuite/src/Test/Cabal/Monad.hs
+++ b/cabal-testsuite/src/Test/Cabal/Monad.hs
@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ data CommonArgs = CommonArgs {
 commonArgParser :: Parser CommonArgs
 commonArgParser = CommonArgs
     <$> optional (option str
-        ( help "Path to cabal-install executable to test"
+        ( help "Path to cabal-install executable to test. If omitted, tests involving cabal-install are skipped!"
        <> long "with-cabal"
        <> metavar "PATH"
         ))