"Is cabal-install stable enough yet that GHC should be inflicting it on newbies?"

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You can get that behavior locally to a directory by using that --write-ghc-environment-files=always option I just mentioned. For example you can create a minimal cabal file like this:

cabal-version:   3.0
name:            sandbox
version:         0

library
    build-depends:
        base, megaparsec

And then run cabal build --write-ghc-environment-files=always. Any subsequent uses of ghc or ghci in that directory or subdirectories can now use megaparsec.

Perhaps cabal could make this workflow a bit easier with dedicated commands and cabal could also make it possible to use this approach for the global default environment. And with this minimal package format it should also be easy to create a program that adds or removes dependencies from the command line.

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