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The idea that somehow every single language and community needs its own crappy package management systems is just utterly broken. There's no reason you can't u

by slrz 10y ago

The idea that somehow every single language and community needs its own crappy package management systems is just utterly broken. There's no reason you can't use the same package format and tools for code written in multiple languages. You might get some additional convenience by having small language-specific plugins (like the automatic dependency extractors in RPM) but that's just a tiny amount of the necessary tooling. The vast majority is not language-specific at all. With these language-community systems, there's also the problem of depending on code written in another language. My Go program might well depend on a C library, just as my C program can require a shell script.

rat87 10y ago
Unfortunately the idea that a new language meant for widespread use can ship without its own package management systems is even more broken. Generally languages need a good tool to allow (nested) dependencies that has a simple (preferably declarative) dependency file. Would it be nice to be able to have a cross language platform tool(jvm tools do generally play nice across languages in my understanding) like nix that also allows setting up other non language specific dependencies? Yes. But I'm not sure any are good enough/simple enough yet. Also language ecosystems tend to avoid non language dependencies (unless they're so common theyre typically installed with the language like lxml/libxml2) or have crappy ways to try to build c dependencies. So this is if not solved partially worked around. These package managers are mostly for development, not deployment although frequently they are also used to build or even deploy code. It would be nice for each language package manager to have plugins to generate self contained deb/rpm/ect. for deployment or even fancier to allow some dependencies to be (assuming it's not a language that prefers static linking/bundling) satisfied by system packages. But these take time and effort to write.

by slrz 10y ago

rat87 10y ago

Unfortunately the idea that a new language meant for widespread use can ship without its own package management systems is even more broken. Generally languages need a good tool to allow (nested) dependencies that has a simple (preferably declarative) dependency file. Would it be nice to be able to have a cross language platform tool(jvm tools do generally play nice across languages in my understanding) like nix that also allows setting up other non language specific dependencies? Yes. But I'm not sure any are good enough/simple enough yet. Also language ecosystems tend to avoid non language dependencies (unless they're so common theyre typically installed with the language like lxml/libxml2) or have crappy ways to try to build c dependencies. So this is if not solved partially worked around. These package managers are mostly for development, not deployment although frequently they are also used to build or even deploy code. It would be nice for each language package manager to have plugins to generate self contained deb/rpm/ect. for deployment or even fancier to allow some dependencies to be (assuming it's not a language that prefers static linking/bundling) satisfied by system packages. But these take time and effort to write.