[lambda_obrien]

I love writing Haskell code, but the community desperately needs to agree on one method of install and project setup-- cabal, stack, nix, whatever-- and then make it WAY easier for new users to start projects.

I'm not at all saying simplify the language for the LCD, but I have to manage all three of those tools and more and their usability is horrible. The configs are all over the place, there's 2 or 3 per project repo, another several global configs, the command line tools have a thousand flags and switches, the compiler language extensions are insane (i have like 30 turned on by default, and those are just the safe ones), i could continue...

This project, at least, tries to help the new user get into it quickly, I appreciate that because it helps me get my friends to try Haskell for a nontrivial use right away, then they want to invest the time to learn the rest of the Haskell toolchain bullshit.

[egonschiele]

FWIW stack uses cabal under the hood but is far easier to use. I would not use cabal these days, stack solves a lot of the dependency issues cabal had.

[icrbow]

Yes, but not the cabal-the-binary. You don't need both installed.

[sshine]

For me, I use Stack personally, but I make sure that libraries can be built using either stack or cabal, by triggering CI with cabal.

[johnbonachon]

I do know there's not a single/unique way of installing dependencies, etc. But the IHP docs are enough clear to set up a project and install everything in just a moment. Maybe the Haskell community doesn't have a clear choice, but the people of DI have made that very simple.

[lambda_obrien]

For sure, and I appreciate that! I just wish everyone would go nix, or everyone would go stack, or whatever.

[cies]

I'd say this competition has been the reason for some amazing innovation. Both Nix and Stack are pretty next level compared what most other languages have going. And since there is no big corp (like Google for Golang) to order what to use, we will have competing standards for a long time.

[whateveracct]

You can just use ghcup and cabal. The cutover you're nix-style cabal builds has happened and they are excellent.

You can even just use ghcup and cabal but work against a Stackage LTS snapshot for added ease.

If you end up using Nix in the future, barely anything will change for you if you start with bare cabal. It's additive, not a replacement.

Same goes for if you use stack as an enhancement, although a big appeal of stack is its own CLI.

[icrbow]

I would like to have stack backported into cabal, but Nix and others, that just entire code galaxies.

At least that isn't cmake et al.