No, you're better off having a single well-integrated system package manager. Once you start stuffing shit into system directories behind its back you lose all oversight. You can't even answer a simple questions such as "where did this file in /bin come from?" anymore. You can't tell the package manager "verify all installed files in system directories with the checksums listed in the package managers database" because the package manager doesn't know all the files.
I agree with GP, I avoid projects that require me to use a third party package manager if at all possible. If only because none of them seem to understand the reason for code signing.
And wait for MS and Apple and your distro to keep up with ALL upstream changes? And have them approve what goes in there? Yeah, good luck with that...
>Once you start stuffing shit into system directories behind its back you lose all oversight. You can't even answer a simple questions such as "where did this file in /bin come from?" anymore.
You'd be surprised. E.g. brew files are in the Cellar dir, npm modules are in node_modules, global pip files are in their own folder, etc.
No package manager I use (and I use several, and all are quite popular) messes with system directories.
Yeah, you're pretty competent at remembering all that, because you have to, over and over again, re-build this ontology... probably as part of a job or profession. Therefore "its good for you".
But, outside that box, is a world where applications, developers, the operating system .. and most important of all: users, don't have to hire people such as yourself to maintain all that gluck. And in that world, the OS and Apps guys, when they build Frameworks, don't make the mistake of -DRY/NIH/RTW'ing themselves, over and over and over again (I count 4 in your list, but there are many, many more sorts of this kind of thing) .. ad infinitum.
It is a huge mess, modern software development. There is nothing efficient, effective, or 'intelligent' about everyone having their own idea about how to add packages to a system. We learn this, every single time some language-/tech-/stack-dejour forks off their own little mind about how this all should be done.
Its because there isn't such attention being paid by the people who assemble the operating systems, about the needs of .. what admittedly becomes a huge reason to stay 'stuck' on the OS. Once you get it all set up. And have a team of monkeys to keep it from falling over, just because someone did an install somewhere, touched a .file accidentally, didn't quite properly set up a BOGUS_ENV before doing configure, etc. and etc. and /etc.
So, you're better off with a technology that needs you to manually manage packages and dependencies?
>Seriously, what is going on with the OS vendors?
What about them? What do they have to do with Node, QT, Python, and other communities with package managers?
OS X has the App Store for OS X apps, Windows has something similar, Linux distros have package managers for their userlands. Other projects have nothing to do with OSes schedules...