I have a slight tangent to this topic: Why does every language need their own package manager? I can understand avoiding a specific distro's PM but do we need to reinvent the wheel for every single language? Do we need to poorly reinvent Make just so the build syntax matches the source?
It seems like a better solution would be to declare a common interface, both to users and to tools, for each language's package system. At least that way there's some guarantee (or at least a strong hint to the author!) that any given tool would support some nice-to-have extra functionality.
A use case for me is that I see a really neat thing Foo written in an unfamiliar language. Install instructions go something like: "Just run 'simple_make foo' to try it out!" or perhaps "Just run 'curl http://get-foo-bar.baz/rootme | sh -'". Okay, now perhaps it's installed. It might even be installed where I want but it probably won't be. But what happens if I need to update it? How can I keep all of these pet projects up to date? I have to go and learn easy_install, gem, leiningen, sbt, maven, npm, go, quicklisp, cabal, etc.
I mean, I'm not too lazy to read up on each tool but it adds up quick and not every tool supports an Autoconf-like --prefix or apt-get {update,upgrade}.
It seems like a better solution would be to declare a common interface, both to users and to tools, for each language's package system. At least that way there's some guarantee (or at least a strong hint to the author!) that any given tool would support some nice-to-have extra functionality.
A use case for me is that I see a really neat thing Foo written in an unfamiliar language. Install instructions go something like: "Just run 'simple_make foo' to try it out!" or perhaps "Just run 'curl http://get-foo-bar.baz/rootme | sh -'". Okay, now perhaps it's installed. It might even be installed where I want but it probably won't be. But what happens if I need to update it? How can I keep all of these pet projects up to date? I have to go and learn easy_install, gem, leiningen, sbt, maven, npm, go, quicklisp, cabal, etc.
I mean, I'm not too lazy to read up on each tool but it adds up quick and not every tool supports an Autoconf-like --prefix or apt-get {update,upgrade}.