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Then the author of that script is the one who deals with said complexity in that specific manner, either because of upstream inability to provide releases for e

Then the author of that script is the one who deals with said complexity in that specific manner, either because of upstream inability to provide releases for every combination of operating system and hardware, or because some people are strictly focused on hard problems in their part of implementation, or something else. A package manager with “well designed” packages still can't define what they do, invent program logic and behavior. Someone has to choose just the same, and can make good or bad decisions. For example, nothing prohibits a calculator application that depends on a full compile and build system for certain language (in run-time), or on Electron framework. In fact, it's totally possible to have such example programs. However, we can't automatically deduce whether packaging that for a different system is going to be problematic, and which are better alternatives.

josephg 3y ago
> A package manager with “well designed” packages still can't define what they do, invent program logic and behavior. The solution to this is easy and widespread. Just ship scripts with the package which allow it to compile and configure itself for the host system. Apt, npm, homebrew and cargo all allow packages to do this when necessary. A well designed PyTorch package (in a well designed package manager) could contain a stub that, when installed, looks at the host system and select and locally installs the correct version of the PyTorch binary based on its environment and configuration. This should be the job of the PyTorch package. Not the job of every single downstream consumer of PyTorch to handle independently.
- forrestthewoods 3y ago
  > Just ship scripts with the package which allow it to compile and configure itself for the host system. Eek. That sounds awful to me. it is exceptionally complex, fragile, and error prone. The easy solution is to SHIP YOUR FUCKING DEPENDENCIES. I’m a Windows man. Which means I don’t really use an OS level packages manager. What I expect is a zip file that I can extract and double-click an exe. To be clear I’m talking about running a program as an end user. Compiling and packaging a program is a different and intrinsically more complex story. That said, I 1000% believe that build systems should exclusively use toolchains that are part of the monorepo. Build systems should never use any system installed tools. This is more complex to setup, but quite delightful and reliable once you have it.

josephg 3y ago

> A package manager with “well designed” packages still can't define what they do, invent program logic and behavior. The solution to this is easy and widespread. Just ship scripts with the package which allow it to compile and configure itself for the host system. Apt, npm, homebrew and cargo all allow packages to do this when necessary. A well designed PyTorch package (in a well designed package manager) could contain a stub that, when installed, looks at the host system and select and locally installs the correct version of the PyTorch binary based on its environment and configuration. This should be the job of the PyTorch package. Not the job of every single downstream consumer of PyTorch to handle independently.

forrestthewoods 3y ago
> Just ship scripts with the package which allow it to compile and configure itself for the host system. Eek. That sounds awful to me. it is exceptionally complex, fragile, and error prone. The easy solution is to SHIP YOUR FUCKING DEPENDENCIES. I’m a Windows man. Which means I don’t really use an OS level packages manager. What I expect is a zip file that I can extract and double-click an exe. To be clear I’m talking about running a program as an end user. Compiling and packaging a program is a different and intrinsically more complex story. That said, I 1000% believe that build systems should exclusively use toolchains that are part of the monorepo. Build systems should never use any system installed tools. This is more complex to setup, but quite delightful and reliable once you have it.