4 ms·

> A colleague was joking, "I guess even Microsoft itself isn't able to manage local Python installations on Windows…" I've been waiting for Microsoft to solve

> A colleague was joking, "I guess even Microsoft itself isn't able to manage local Python installations on Windows…" I've been waiting for Microsoft to solve package management on Windows since I played around with debian's apt 20 years. That's not snark, it seemed like Microsoft's product complexity and dedication to backwards compatibility of software would make them the ones to move software management forward. Really dig into the problem space and reinvent the package manager beyond anything that's come out of the open source space. Instead we've got windows update, windows features, microsoft store, software center and winget (you know, that Microsoft-built package manager for Windows you install from the other Microsoft-built package manager for Windows).

LexiMax 3y ago
> It seemed like Microsoft's product complexity and dedication to backwards compatibility of software would make them the ones to move software management forward. That's precisely why they _didn't_ go with the package manager model of software distribution. Package managers in most distros assume that everything you download via apt/dnf is a part of the operating system and integrates with whatever dependencies the OS ships with. It's a great system if you're an operating system maintainer, but terrible if you're a third-party software developer who has no interest in dealing with 5-6 different OS's repo formats and dependency versions. On Windows and macOS, you vendor most everything, provide runtime installers for the rest, and that's usually enough to be resilient to bitrot. Package formats like Flatpak, Snap and AppImage are the only projects who seem to be taking the problem of software distribution on Linux seriously, and of those only Flatpak seems to have the mature tooling and lack of myopia necessary to pull it off. For the times that I do miss apt on Windows, chocolatey is pretty good at installing software and vcpkg works great for linkable libraries.
- dogleash 3y ago
  The state space doesn't have the conveniences that linux and language tools leverage, that's why I wanted to see them try to advance the field beyond what we have now.
  - LexiMax 3y ago
    Which conveniences are you talking about? Chocolatey gives me the "automatically updating my programs" experience, and vendoring dependencies with vcpkg is about as turnkey as it gets - add a git submodule to your project, reference the vcpkg toolchain in your CMakeLists.txt file, and you're done.

LexiMax 3y ago

> It seemed like Microsoft's product complexity and dedication to backwards compatibility of software would make them the ones to move software management forward. That's precisely why they _didn't_ go with the package manager model of software distribution. Package managers in most distros assume that everything you download via apt/dnf is a part of the operating system and integrates with whatever dependencies the OS ships with. It's a great system if you're an operating system maintainer, but terrible if you're a third-party software developer who has no interest in dealing with 5-6 different OS's repo formats and dependency versions. On Windows and macOS, you vendor most everything, provide runtime installers for the rest, and that's usually enough to be resilient to bitrot. Package formats like Flatpak, Snap and AppImage are the only projects who seem to be taking the problem of software distribution on Linux seriously, and of those only Flatpak seems to have the mature tooling and lack of myopia necessary to pull it off. For the times that I do miss apt on Windows, chocolatey is pretty good at installing software and vcpkg works great for linkable libraries.

dogleash 3y ago
The state space doesn't have the conveniences that linux and language tools leverage, that's why I wanted to see them try to advance the field beyond what we have now.
- LexiMax 3y ago
  Which conveniences are you talking about? Chocolatey gives me the "automatically updating my programs" experience, and vendoring dependencies with vcpkg is about as turnkey as it gets - add a git submodule to your project, reference the vcpkg toolchain in your CMakeLists.txt file, and you're done.