apt-get install npm && npm install bower && bower install ...
Why can't npm be turned into ppa:nodejs and pip be turned into ppa:python?
It's still squarely in early adopter territory and the documentation is woeful, but if you're willing to put up with that it really does feel like the "one true package manager" I've been searching for. I've been using it at work and while the setup was painful and some things are still awkward (ie statically linking Haskell executables), it's been incredible overall. The up-front work in learning the system and getting it running has paid off already, and it'll pay off even more as I continue using Nix for other things.
Because Makefiles are quite limiting.
> Why can't npm be turned into ppa:nodejs and pip be turned into ppa:python?
Because that would be OS specific.
Make runs on Windows, OS X, Linux and Android.
How is a Makefile quite limited?
• make(1) has a hard time rebuilding target files when source files have changed. The problem is that users have to declare the dependencies of a target before the build, but due to file search paths, it can be that dependencies are only known after building a target. To know about all dependencies, make(1) would have to build any target at least twice.
• make(1) by default does not rebuild a target when its build rules change. While this seems really weird to me, it seems to be a consequence of having a single makefile. When a build rule is changed, the makefile changes. So should all targets depend on the makefile implicitly? One could argue that they should – but then each change in a makefile would rebuild all targets.
• make(1) can not handle non-existence dependencies. Imagine a file foo.h being searched for by a compiler in directories bar and baz (in that order). If the header file baz/foo.h is found, then bar/foo.h should be considered a non-existence dependency: If at any future point in time it exists, the target should be rebuilt.
These problems are all solved by DJB's redo approach, which I implemented in a few hundred lines of Bourne shell (/bin/sh): http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/bin/redo-sh.html
The compiler may know paths, the linker may know paths, the shell might, make might, or you can supply them.
I've seen and used nested Makefiles before.
These things aren't really make things. If I use tcc, Haskell or Go in my Makefile, then they mightn't apply.
If you can write it in Bash, you can integrate it into your Makefile.
How would you solve all three problems I listed using make(1)?
If I use pip as part of my buildchain, then it has a series of places it can lookup, or you can supply one. Same with npm, cargo, and even Go.
If instead, I use a tool that has dynamic lookup, then it will only look in those places after the event.
So, if I used make to send a command like:
$(echo 'require "foo"' > bar.lua)
So how would this be a limitation of make itself? The limitation only exists in what you call with make... Which could be anything.
By contrast, redo builds the target first and then records what was used to build it. For example, when compiling a C file with “gcc -M”, gcc will output dependency information. With redo, you normally record those dependencies after the target has been built. With make(1), that information has to end up in the makefile somehow, possibly leading to further builds.
From the manual, on implicit rules:
foo : foo.o bar.o cc -o foo foo.o bar.o $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS)
Because you mention `foo.o' but do not give a rule for it, make will automatically look for an implicit rule that tells how to update it. This happens whether or not the file `foo.o' currently exists.
COBOL already did what C does, why do you need C?
Assembler is Turing complete.
How is assembler quite limited compared to PHP (or C or COBOL)?
That was not my argument.
My argument, was calling make "quite limited".
How would you call make limited? The syntax is expressive, and so is the macro access.
I never said I wanted to replace or not replace make.
To respond to your initial question if we really need so much dependency systems: No, we don't need to!
As the author already needs to use composer to set up PHP dependencies why not use composer for the other packages required? It's not a problem to get the common needed libraries via composer which dramatically reduces dependency complexity, deployment and build scripts because you don't need that much tools.
Turtles all the way down!