On Wednesday, 20 February 2013 at 11:12:30 UTC, Sönke Ludwig
wrote:
Since the discussion about yes or no regarding OS specific
package
managers still goes on, IMO there is one argument that is far
more
important than all technical or aesthetic aspects.
A language specific, but cross-platform, package manager makes
publishing and using published libraries a lot simpler for
/developers/.
And since D wants to grow, it's extremely important to provide
new
developers with the most comfortable and efficient development
experience, so that they also stay and get productive after the
first looks.
I think that package managers in Ruby, Python,
JavaScript/node.js were
crucial in their growth. Without them, they probably wouldn't
have that
rich ecosystem of libraries and tools that is available today
and is one
of the key reasons why so many people choose those languages.
Implementing an export function to turn a D package into a
variety of
platform specific package formats is a possible option that
could close
the gap and make installing applications also comfortable for
the end user.
I agree. In the end, you need developers before you can have
end-users!
Also, developers often want to micro-manage the experience the
end-user gets, including installers etc...
Look at python. Python has good package management, but it only
gets used by developers. No end-user reaches for pip/easy_install
to get the dependencies for Blender and no-one will, it all gets
taken care of by OS-level package managers or is bundled with the
installer. The end user of a piece of software should never have
to know what language it is written in or have to get in involved
in that languages own ecosystem.
End-users need language-agnostic and OS-specific, developers
often benefit best from the opposite.
