> I run into many of the same issues as you, but pushing some library to become standard does not solve the problem at all

No, but keeping these concerns "downstream" causes these problems to be repeatedly re-solved. This is wasteful in it's massive redundancy. How many times have I seen the neophyte make a mistake when trying to link SDL? I've beyond lost count. And that's one of the super easy cases.

> For every non-language feature you push into the standard, you increase the amount of coupling the compiler has to an OS.

And decrease the amount of coupling the end programs have to the OS, the number of which hopefully significantly outnumber the compiler. All this assuming we're talking about functionality that must interoperate with the OS of course -- things like new container types have no such concerns.

> The problem of package and configuration management is an OS problem

> The way we maintain packages should be agnostic of any particular OS or language

These two statements directly conflict with each other by my parsing. I agree in theory with the latter, but in practice things like #include path configuration are fundamentally language specific. In some distant land of the future where package management is a solved problem, lean standard libraries might make more sense. However, it'd take some convincing to convince me package management is even a solvable problem in the generalized case.

OS focused package managers like RPMs and APT have as a rule caused me far more work than they've solved. They don't have the versions I need, they don't configure things for the platforms I need, they don't run on the OSes I need. Even for something as fundamental as, say, integrating the boost libraries, I've found that the moment I want to go beyond "hello world" it's simpler to completely ignore APT entirely and build the bloody thing yourself.

Non-OS package managers like PIPs, RubyGems, Cpan Modules, NuGet packages, etc. I've had more luck with. I've heard good arguments against standardization of libraries in the python world -- why freeze the API and discourage competition when package management is easy and works?

I've yet to see anything resembling progress of a similar sort in the world of C++. You say "Nix is making great steps towards that capability, which don't require adding bloat to existing solutions" -- but I've yet to see it. I suspect I never will: I suspect it'd take over a decade to become a proper force, and more interest in solving the problem than I've seen. I suspect those who would solve such problems are instead writing entire new languages and ecosystems that will one day relegate C++ to the world of legacy programming, leaving behind so much language cruft.

> The C++ Committee are attempting to solve the problem in a different way - by saying "we'll handle everything for you". What about adding libraries to ISO C++ for scraping websites, or accessing RDBMS, parsing text, or one of the dozens of common programming problems that exist? Why graphics in particular, and where do we stop attempting to push things into the standard? Screw it, why don't we just make ISO C++ a standard operating system?

What's your stance on the .NET Framework? It sounds like the poster child that could have inspired this paragraph in frustration, or perhaps you don't consider that a standard library. It has libraries for scraping websites, accessing RDBMs, parsing text, and many of the dozens of common programming problems that exist, including graphics. You might call it emacs syndrome. I say it's a damn sight better than where C++'s currently at, even if it has given me grief trying to port Mono.

> It's used in embedded systems, and they have the exact opposite problems you describe - the trouble of taking things out of the language, rather than putting them in.

This, at least, I'm willing to not label a corner case. But even C++'s existent pitifully tiny standard library outlines some parts that don't need to be made available on embedded targets, and I see no reason such a graphics library wouldn't also be so outlined, or particularly difficult to "take out".