Stack competes against Cabal's binary file cabal-install[5] and has been created as a result of the overall criticism about dependency problems.[6] However, it does not provide its own package format, but uses extant *.cabal files and complements projects with an added stack.yaml file.
^"Why is stack not cabal?". Retrieved 27 January 2016. This blog post is intended to answer two very frequest [sic] questions about stack: how is it different from Cabal? And: Why was it developed as a separate project instead of being worked on with Cabal?
^"What do Haskellers want? Over a thousand tell us". Retrieved 13 January 2016. Package management with cabal is the single worst aspect of using Haskell. Asked if improvements to package management would make a difference to their future choice of Haskell for a project, 38% said it would be "crucial" and a further 29% said it would be "important". Comments connected cabal with words like hell, pain, awful, sucks, frustrating, and hideous. Only this topic showed such grave dissatisfaction.
