> the absolute state of the tooling of the modern world

Hah, TeX Live is... not that.

It's been enormous since I installed it off a CD in the 90s. The idea, and it works, is that you can just compile anyone's stuff out of the TeX ecosystem.

There is just... a lot... in it. You don't need a package manager if you install the whole universe locally. Like I said: not what I would call a modern approach to tooling.

On the other hand, I have latex files from the mid-Noughties and, I don't even need to check: they'll compile if I want them to.

But yeah, if you want just a little piece of TeX here and there, you're off the beaten track. That's not how TUG rolls.