Another reason to create distro-specific packages for Haskell modules
Since the question comes up every now and then on haskell-cafe; why bother with distro-specific packages when we have Cabal? This problem is trivially solved with packaging like Debian’s.
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An excellent reason: proper packaging (documentation, profiling)! Besides this, it makes it cheaper to start using new Haskell apps (since their libraries are already packaged for your system, and you can get the binary without GHC being needed), and the native packages track non-Haskell dependencies (such as C libraries) properly.
All around, well done distro packages provide a better experience for non-Haskellers, and drive adoption of Haskell in new domains.
All the more we can do to bring Haskell into the mainstream.