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I think 3 is probably true for language developers, but for users, language repos feel like they are needed because like none of the linux distros really ship e

I think 3 is probably true for language developers, but for users, language repos feel like they are needed because like none of the linux distros really ship everything you need, or even a reliable fraction without installing a bunch of dumb hacks to get it to work. It's much easier just to do "pip install" so that's where the demand is. And sure, may be you're right that distro packaging is the "wrong model," again, that is the problem then for distros, users are stuck using ubuntu or whatever so they don't have the option to do the "right" thing, so they do use the mishmash of packaging/repo systems as just the cost of doing business.

carlmr 4y ago
Apart from not shipping what you need, you often only get a fraction of the versions you need. For development you may want to test your code against multiple versions of the system libraries. This is not easy using a distro package manager.
- fragmede 4y ago
  Maybe our definition of "easy" doesn't agree, but for Ksplice, we had to build kernels using the exact same, often old versions of GCC and everything else (binutils, etc). We made schroots (this predated docker) and then we used the system package manager to install the requisite old version of packages. Wasn't trivial to get the whole system setup, but getting old versions of packages installed wasn't impossibly hard either.