cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/64685863
Lots of programming languages have their own package manager, separate from the distribution or OS package manager.
Going loosely from the TIOBE index:
- Python has Pip
- C# has NuGet
- Javascript has
npmfor Node.js- Visual Basic also uses NuGet
- R has a repository of packages that can be installed by running
install.packages("something")in R- Rust has Cargo/Crates
- Go has the
go getcommand- Swift has its own package manager
swift package- Ruby has RubyGems
- Java has Maven and Gradle (not sure if they are full package managers, or build automation tools with dependency resolution)
- PHP has Composer for managing libraries and dependencies
- C and C++ are the only exceptions I can think of, off the top of my head; libraries are managed by, and coupled to, the operating system
I got the same feeling that it shouldn’t be rocket science. Then again, I’m most experienced with C#, which is just a very clean and professional ecosystem, and I often experience that other languages can feel rough around the edges in comparison. E.g. in npm JS, different package managers create entirely different folder structures, even though the build system is 100% the same!
So maybe a package manager for C# would be straightforward, while npm JS would require a bunch of research about what happens behind the scenes.
And if other languages are similar to npm JS, it’s easy to imagine that your want to keep languages separated for cleanliness - but then you kinda just get a bunch of one-language-package managers in a trenchcoat, so why even bother. OR you have the same code handling it all, becoming a bit of a mess.