What I really want to know, is why package development is such a Rube Goldberg machine. Not for programming-language packages, per se, but rather for OS package

What I really want to know, is why package development is such a Rube Goldberg machine. Not for programming-language packages, per se, but rather for OS packages of simple programming-language packages. Have you tried to package a random Python/Ruby/etc. CLI program, for Debian? Or how about for Homebrew? Each one involves a cacophony of PL scripts calling shell-scripts calling PL scripts, and internal/undocumented packager subcommands calling other internal/undocumented packager subcommands. It takes ~forever to do a checked build of a package in these systems, and 99% of it is just because of how spread out the implementation of such checks is over 100 different components implemented at different times by different people. It could all be vastly simplified by reimplementing all the checks and transforms in a single pass that gradually builds up an in-memory state, making assertions about it and transforming it as it goes, and then emitting it if everything works out. You know — like a compiler.