> my package manager doesn't let me download an application without runtime That's not true (most package managers have options to force downloads without dep

> my package manager doesn't let me download an application without runtime That's not true (most package managers have options to force downloads without dependencies), but anyway why would you even want to do that, considering you eventually have to download the runtime anyway...? > And then when it is going, people would add metadata to their apps themselves, and we would no longer have to ship the runtimes together with the apps. We had that too, it's Java Web Start and the current MS equivalent (clickonce or whatever it's called). Never worked particularly well for Java (which is why it was removed), works a bit better for Windows because, surprise surprise, the OS vendor made deployment conditions more predictable, as it controls both OS and runtimes. They would never have an incentive to provide the same to third-party runtimes. > Think of the metadata it like a 21st century shebang line. The problems of that approach are legion. The hard truth is that shared libraries (and hence shared runtimes) are an accident of history, meant to cope with a scarcity of storage and bandwidth that we've long overcome. The ideal program is a single static executable that Just Runs regardless of what is going on around it. Everything else is a source of unnecessary complexity for both user and developer.