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ryandraketoday at 1:01 AM1 replyview on HN

I’m the opposite: I want my development tools to use my operating system’s package manager. Nothing enrages me quite like how, when I want to pull in a Python dependency, I have to reach for Python’s parallel package manager. Now I have to keep track of what apt installed and what pip installed. Then I move to do a rust project and there’s now another parallel package manager I need to use to install those dependencies! Yuck!

apt install build-essential or whatever the rpm equivalent is, gets you most of the way to building a C or C++ project.


Replies

the__alchemisttoday at 2:43 AM

If I understand correctly, this makes your program and/or its build system tied to an OS. Depending on the details (You mention interpreted and compiled languages), it's not clear if this would provincialize the build only, or running the application as well. (With complications beyond executable ABI compatibility)

My perspective: I want from the OS: An allocator, threading, filesystem support, dates/times, and in some cases hardware access like for GPUs, USB etc.

I do not want my software to be dependent on a specific OS's package manager. I don't want a headache when I change the PC I'm compiling on, and really don't want to deal with a separate package manager for each OS I distribute the application for. Especially so given that there are so many linux distros.