by palata | 2025-09-19 13:40:46+00:00
> How does this justify the antipathy towards notions of a first-party build system and package manager?

I don't feel particularly antipathic towards notions of first-party build system and package manager. I find it indeniably better to have a first-party build system instead of the fragmentation that exists in C/C++. On the other hand, I don't feel like asking a 20-year old project to leave autotools just because I asked for it. Or to force people to install Python because I think Meson is cool.

As for the package manager, one issue is security: is it (even partly) curated or not? I could imagine npm offering a curated repo, and a non-curated repo. But there is also a cultural thing there: it is considered normal to have zero control over the dependencies (my this I mean that if the developer has not heard of dependencies they are pulling, then it's not under control). Admittedly it is not a tooling problem, it's a culture problem. Though the tooling allows this culture to be the norm.

When I add a C/C++ dependency to my project, I do my shopping: I go check the projects, I check how mature they are, I look into the codebase, I check who has control over it. Sometimes I will depend on the project, sometimes I will choose to fork it in order to have more control. And of course, if I can get it from the curated list offered by my distro, that's even better.

> C/C++ developers clearly want a build system and package manager, hence all this fragmentation

One thing is legacy: it did not exist before, many tools were created, and now they exist. The fact that the ecosystem had the flexibility to test different things (which surely influenced the modern languages) is great. In a way, having a first-party tool makes it harder to get that. And then there are examples like Swift where is slowly converged towards SwiftPM. But at the time CocoaPods and Carthage were invented, SwiftPM was not a thing.

Also devs want a build system and package manager, but they don't necessarily all want the same one :-). I don't use third-party package managers for instance, instead I build my dependencies manually. Which I find gives me more control, also for cross-compiling. Sometimes I have specific requirements, e.g. when building a Linux distribution (think e.g. Yocto or buildroot). And I don't usually want to depend on Python just for the sake of it, and Conan is a Python tool.

> why is it preferable that people trust random third-party package managers and their random third-party repackages of libraries (eg: SQLite on conan and vcpkg)?

It's not. Trusting a third-party package manager is actually exactly the same as trusting npm. It's more convenient, but less secure. However it's better when you can rely on a curated repository (like what Linux distributions generally provide). Not everything can be curated, but there is a core. Think OpenSSL for instance.

> And why is global installation preferable?

For those dependencies that can be curated, there is a question of security. If all your programs on your system link the same system OpenSSL, then it's super easy to update this OpenSSL when there is a security issue. And in situations where what you ship is a Linux system, then there is no point in not doing it. So there are situations where it is preferable. If everything is statically link and you have a critical fix for a common library, you need to rebuild everything.

> If it were up to me

Sure, if we were to rebuild everything from scratch... well we wouldn't do it in C/C++ in the first place, I'm pretty sure. But my Linux distribution exists, has a lot of merits, and I don't find it very nice when people try to enforce their preferences. I am fine if people want to use Flatpak, cargo, pip, nix, their system package manager, something else, or a mix of all that. But I like being able to install packages on my Gentoo system the way I like, potentially modifying them with a user patch. I like being able to choose if I want to link statically or dynamically (on my Linux, I like to link at least some libraries like OpenSSL dynamically, if I build an Android apk, I like to statically link the dependencies).

And I feel like I am not forcing anyone into doing what I like to do. I actually think that most people should not use Gentoo. I don't prevent anyone from using Flatpak or pulling half the Internet with docker containers for everything. But if they come telling me that my way is crap, I will defend it :-).

> I am somewhat at a loss.

I guess I was not trying to say "C/C++ is great, there is nothing to change". I just think it's not all crap, and I see where it all comes from and why we can't just throw everything away. There are many things to criticise, but many times I feel like criticisms are uninformed and just relying on the fact that everybody does that. Everybody spits on CMake, so it's easy to do it as well. But more often than not, if I start talking to someone who said that they cannot imagine how someone could design something as bad as CMake, they themselves write terrible CMakeLists. Those who can actually use CMake are generally a lot more nuanced.