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Comment by qznc | Hacker News Reader

I understand that old languages like C++ or Java have problems providing a single package manager. It seems that newer languages have roughly equivalent services.

Are there any big differences between Cargo and Python/Go/D/Ruby/Javascript/etc?

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I wouldn't say Java has this problem. Look at Maven for instance. Then look back at Crates, you will notice how many common solutions they share.

On the other hand I see that Crates solves the problem of dependency when 2 different version of the same library are used across the project. Maven doesn't solve that and it's painful. However this seems a bigger problem that just a package manager I suppose.

Java has Maven Repository. This can be use from within Ant (Ivy), Maven, Gradle, sbt etc.

Both Ruby and Python are almost as old, if not older than Java. JavaScript is only slightly younger.

I find cargo easier to use than bundler or npm. Specifically I never deal with "environment hell" where some config hasn't been picked up and I'm pulling in the wrong version of a dependency or the language or whatever. This is partly because of the way cargo is designed, but its also helped a lot by the fact that Rust generates statically linked binaries in one build instead of being a continuous interpreter process.

It depends on how you define "big". Cargo is closest to Bundler + rubygems, but with some aspects of npm.

notice that some of the really old ones (perl, tex) have had package managers for a really, really long time.

I think linux (*nix?) vs non-linux heritage might have something to do with it.

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