> You inevitably run into these issues with random third party dependencies on other platforms, too, but it's further from the norm, so you end up with awful be

> You inevitably run into these issues with random third party dependencies on other platforms, too, but it's further from the norm, so you end up with awful bespoke toolchains that contain instructions like "download Egub35.3.zip and extract it to C:\Users\brian\libs." On Windows, there is a very clear solution: for any 3rd party you need outside the Windows SDK, you bundle it into the MSI installer you distribute. When installing the MSI, it can check if this particular 3rd party is already installed, and avoid it. I don't think I've seen anything like the manual instructions you discuss for more than 10 years. Even OSS projects typically ship with simple installers today. I believe, but have not tried it personally so may well be wrong, that similar mechanisms are common on MacOS with App packages.