Wow, thank you @kindaro, eloquent and well-written
While I may differ slightly in my propositions, the “problems I have in mind” are definitely legit and a shared perspective. I really scratch my head when someone pushes back so intensely on those points, particularly on usability.
At least between stack/cabal, I also see it kinda silly to argue about unix-philosophy.
Here’s a random data point for what it’s worth: I gave haskell a shot before Stack, and I gave up solely due to cabal and the ux it provided. I could not understand how that ux was considered reasonable or usable. When Stack came about, I started learning Haskell. At least for me, stack provided a reasonable workflow and user experience that would allow me to focus on haskell and learning my way thru that (instead of fighting with my build tool). Stack isn’t perfect, but (at least for this idiot) it aims to be helpful and reasonable.
I have tried cabal a few times over the years since I picked up haskell in more earnest, mainly after the v2 commands came up, and again a few months ago. I couldn’t really tell that anything seriously improved/changed. I mean, I know there is new functionality, but the philosophy and hap-hazard organization is still the foundation. To this newb and the newbs I’ve worked with, the tool makes no sense, is frustrating to use, not discoverable, and provides little in the way of a holding hand thru the madness that is building software. While I love recommending Haskell, I don’t recommend cabal to them.
To that end, it seems stack has what cabal is missing (usability, support for stackage), while cabal has what stack is missing (a little more flexible about ghc). Probably some other differences too… so that is why I end up wondering what it might look like for the efforts to be combined in some form, and why I asked what the cabal team thought of those possibilities.