Comment by Telaneo
7 hours ago
Many devs love to shit on the guy from the 'I just want the exe. Why is there no exe'? meme. On some level I get it. And in some cases it's not even reasonable to provide a single binary or whatever. But on the other hand, github is being used to deliver end-user software. It is no longer just a dev's workspace/playground. That and the amount of makefiles and python scripts I've seen fail due to some dependency nonsense fills me with rage. It's never Just™ typing 'make' unless the code is trivial. I can wade through the bullshit. I shouldn't have to, and many others aren't even able to.
A lot of mature applications just gave up chasing the bleeding edge, and now only distribute Flatpack/snap/AppImage which is similar to classic exe/DLL ecosystems. A kind of silent tragedy for efficient shared library paradigms.
The hard truth is OSS is often chaotic as there is no authority saying a given API is "good-enough" to version freeze, and it limits how much individuals can integrate without upstream source-tree contiguous-integration at the mercy of 150k devs whims. =3
Given the amount of dependency bullshit I've had to deal with over the years, I'm glad the idea of using shared libraries for everything is dying. I like the core idea of it, but the implementation has never actually Just™ Worked™ in my experience outside of either trivial or curated examples. I guess all those mature applications discovered the same thing.
Flatpacks are great. I've barely ever had a problem with them, and the problems I did have were solvable with a cursory web search. Yes, they take up more space. That's a worthwhile trade-off in exchange for actually working.