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A critique of package managers

n.b. This is a written version of a dialogue from a YouTube video: 2 Language Creators vs 2 Idiots | The Standup Package managers (for programming languages) are evil1. To start, I need to make a few distinctions between concepts a lot of programmers mix up: A package Package Repositories Build Systems Package Managers These are all separate and can have no relation to one another. I have nothing wrong with packages, in fact Odin has packages built into the language. I have nothing wrong with repositories, as that’s how a lot of people discover new packages—a search engine, something I think everyone uses on a daily basis2. Build systems are usually language dependent/specific, and for Odin I have tried minimize the need for a build system entirely (at least as a separate thing) where most projects will build with odin build ., which works due to the linking information being defined in the source code itself with the foreign system. This leaves package managers; what do they do?

Most people assume programming is like every other industry, like actual engineering which has been around for thousands of years, or modern science which has been around for about half a millenium. People trust who they perceive to be the “experts”, as you see all of these articles, books, conference videos, etc, and they all tell you stuff but for the most part which does not necessarily seem true. Copying and vendoring each package manually, and fixing the specific versions down is the most practical approach to keeping a code-base stable, reliable, and maintainable.

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