Re:Rust Without Crates.io
by lolinder on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @05:14PM
(#38270570)
> As a distro contributor, I don't share these views at all.
That's because you're in the very small group of people that knows how your distro's packaging process works in detail. The majority of developers don't use Linux at all, and those that do typically know just enough to install a few blessed packages, not enough to hunt down and install the correct shim in a temporary directly.
Multiply that lack of training by the dozens of Linux distros being used by users of a language, and it's no wonder most modern languages have a standard language-specific package manager. The alternative is for them to be constantly fielding impossible-to-answer questions from developers who (unlike you) don't understand their distro well enough to make compilation work.
It's far easier for the language to have a single cross-platform package management system where the answer is usually as simple as "X, or Y if you're on Windows".
That's because you're in the very small group of people that knows how your distro's packaging process works in detail. The majority of developers don't use Linux at all, and those that do typically know just enough to install a few blessed packages, not enough to hunt down and install the correct shim in a temporary directly.
Multiply that lack of training by the dozens of Linux distros being used by users of a language, and it's no wonder most modern languages have a standard language-specific package manager. The alternative is for them to be constantly fielding impossible-to-answer questions from developers who (unlike you) don't understand their distro well enough to make compilation work.
It's far easier for the language to have a single cross-platform package management system where the answer is usually as simple as "X, or Y if you're on Windows".