That is entirely your distribution's fault. ArchLinux has a user-hostile packaging approach which I do not experience in Fedora.
Arch Linux approach to python/haskell packaging is a great case study of what not to do...
I completely avoid any haskell package in Arch and just build it with Stack, it's usually simple.
What does Arch do in particular to cause a mess? It's been a hot minute since I last used it and surely didn't use pandoc back then.