The ghc package provides dynamic libraries. By default, cabal expects statically linked base libraries. This behavior can be changed as described here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Haskell#Configuring_Cabal_for_dynamic_linking

When a first-time user tries to set up their environment to start learning haskell, they might try these commands, following cabal's tutorials.
pacman -S ghc cabal-install
mkdir myfirstapp
cd myfirstapp
cabal init
cabal run
This of course won't work as expected. `cabal run` will create a default ~/.cabal/config, which is configured for static libraries, then print an error: Could not find module 'Prelude'.

A savvy user might then check the arch wiki and find out that they need to use the --ghc-options=-dynamic flag, or else modify their ~/.cabal/config .
However, it would be easier for a new user if `cabal run` worked out of the box, without requiring a wiki hunt.

The following strategies should work (pending a resolution to https://github.com/haskell/cabal/issues/9040 to handle ghc-options):

Option 1: provide a ~/.cabal/config file, as follows, then call `cabal user-config update` to fill in the remaining configuration options that cabal expects.
library-vanilla: False
shared: True
executable-dynamic: True
program-default-options
ghc-options: -dynamic

Option 1 will likely clobber any existing user configurations; personally I wouldn't recommend it.

Option 2: use user-config init's --augment flag to provide a default configuration at the end of installation:
$ cabal user-config init -a "
library-vanilla: False
shared: True
executable-dynamic: True
program-default-options
ghc-options: -dynamic"

Option 2 will do nothing if a config file already exists - letting users who have a working static library config continue to use it after an update.

Option 3: use user-config's update at the end of installation:
$ cabal user-config update -a "
library-vanilla: False
shared: True
executable-dynamic: True
program-default-options
ghc-options: -dynamic"

Option 3 will overwrite the specified values, but leave the rest of the config file untouched. This might have an advantage for new users ("I updated my cabal-install and now it works!") but it might be frustrating for users of ghc-static.