> For example, python should be installable on everything from Windows to BSD all using the same "pm install python" command. Packages will be marked as explici

> For example, python should be installable on everything from Windows to BSD all using the same "pm install python" command. Packages will be marked as explicitly supporting OSes. I don't see how that would work. In an abstract sense, I can conceptualize it, but from a practical standpoint, I can't see it ever being implemented well enough to the point where it would be widely adopted (which would be the whole point). If you can think of a way to do it, by all means go for it, but I just don't think it's possible. > A bash/sh dependency hurts on non-Unix OSes. I'd rather Python than sh. I also admit that, for the most part, I absolutely hate sh and all its derivates and view them all as dirty hacks, so this is probably just innate bias. I think it's just your bias. At some point, whatever language it's written in would be non-native on most of the OSes, so you'd have to port something one way or the other (Python has a fairly nice port that abstracts away some of the warts, but it's still just serving as a pseudo-agnostic interface). Given that, why not sh? It's already been ported to Windows (I've never used Cygwin, but it seems like it'd be a useful starting point), and virtually every other OS is either Unix-like or supports some native POSIX-like interface for compatibility reasons. If you're complaining about sh syntax, I'm a bit sympathetic toward that, but it's ingrained enough - and good enough - that I wouldn't go to the effort of replacing it. Also remember that, for shell scripting, you don't want a language as powerful as Python - it needs to be able to do a very small set of simple tasks and do them well. Also, just think about concurrency. We take pipes for granted, but imagine trying to do that all natively in Python.