You can't have an effective package manager for a compiled language unless the package manager is actually a part of your own build system. The example I alway

You can't have an effective package manager for a compiled language unless the package manager is actually a part of your own build system. The example I always use: you want to use libfftw ("Fastest Fourier Transform in the West"). But the library can be compiled with (at least) two options: use floats or doubles, use threads or not. That creates (at least) four possible variants of the final library. The only way to address this (and IIUC, Cargo for Rust does this) is to somehow have the pkg manager be a part of your build system, so that you end up with a local copy of the library, built as required.