Most dependencies in the C/C++ world come with fewer dependencies of their own (at least, an order of magnitude fewer than the average rust dependency).

Perhaps a Makefile could be considered arbitrary code execution, but we've been running Makefiles for 50 years and we haven't had the supply chain issues we see in NPM, etc.

Supply chain risk was always considered in the C/C++ world... think back to Ken Thompson's 1984 paper "Reflections on Trusting Trust" where he questioned if you could even trust your compiler.

Perhaps the main difference between the Rust and C/C++ world is less about the tooling or languages, but more cultural? I don't know, just something to think about.

But how often do people just copy and paste code in the C/C++ ecosystem? Or reimplement things badly? Last I checked VLC had a homegrown XML parser.

Experts know that copy/pasting and/or reimplementing code is not an issue in practice regardless of how often it comes up as an anti-pattern in freshman CS courses. The (amalgamated) software system can still be audited in reasonable time as long as the number of third party dependencies is kept low.

Rust has thrown the baby out with the bathwater in that regard resulting in software that is practically impossible to audit without putting in enormous effort.

In 2026 it does, vcpkg and conan.

the fact that you mention two options, shows already that C++ doesn't have an equivalent