29
What is the difference between Linux package managers?
(programming.dev)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
29 points (96.8% liked)
Explain Like I'm Five
14249 readers
40 users here now
Simplifying Complexity, One Answer at a Time!
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions.
- Share relevant content.
- Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
- Use appropriate language and tone.
- Report violations.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I don't mind the package manager differences. What i have started to find annoying is different languages or sites requiring their own installers. Like pip or npm or git etc.
I've only ever used debian/ubuntu linux versions and there is some differences, but between dpkg and aptitude/apt-get/apt, it isn't too much to deal with.
And some package manager have been designed ground up to work better with a certain build.
I hear arches manager is super fast. But i'm good with apt.
It's all choice.
Your OS's own scripts use Python. So it installs Python by default. But the version of Python that it needs for those scripts, isn't necessarily the same one that you want to use as a developer. Developers often want to run brand-new versions of open-source software, but the OS depends on stable versions of that same software.
The current solution is to just completely decouple the two. Your OS's Python libraries are separate from the Python libraries you're using as a developer. That way, you can update the latter to whatever unstable version you want, while being confident that you're not going to break your OS.
Aside from the technical problems you mentioned, it also solves the convenience problem of how to distribute libraries. C/C++ is really bad here because they dont have an integrated management tool. If you want to distribute over Linux package managers, then you will have to package it for every distro, paying attention to best practices and figuring out your dependencies for each one, you'll also have to put it on the VS package repo for developers using Windows and possibly also support a Windows installer (and uninstaller) for those that dont use VS.
The alternative is to upload to a single repo and be done.
I've found that certain libraries i need to compile come with their own libraries and npm packaged and i end up with several hundred mb of bloat and 12 versions of npm and libraries just to try to install some package.
Installing a lot of things from github can be more of a pain than it's worth.
Especially the first time. When you don't know that there are now different npm instances on your system and you try to install or update something and you affect your entire system instead of the package directory.
Npm is not user friendly imho.
I guess maybe the thought with pip and npm is they’re very specialized and the others are much more general. Why bloat a package manager with repositories that many will never need when you can download a specialized one for a specific need. No reason to even have access to npm if you don’t code in js or same with pip and python.
That said a way to add those repositories to other package managers would be nice and maybe possible. I’ve never really researched it.
But it’s like anything else, get people into your ecosystem rather than someone else’s