[viraptor]

> Imagine if you tried installing an app on Windows or MacOS, and they demanded that you install a separate package manager along with it

This is basically how Windows works. There's no package manager, so effectively anyone shipping larger software ships their own auto updater, their own dependencies and either embeds or downloads extra installers for the MS redistributables at install time. They don't ask you, just effectively do it anyway.

[erik_seaberg]

Windows did get a package manager with dependency support, it’s just that many developers are still shipping custom installer programs that ignore it and almost all the users are still willing to run those installers.

[viraptor]

Winget? That only started existing recently. Systems that are still supported don't include it. I'd wait a couple years before devs even start seriously considering it.

[erik_seaberg]

I'm thinking of Windows Installer (the MSI engine and database). I haven’t been in that world for a while, but it looks like winget is a frontend to a repo of MSIs or custom installers or whatever the store uses.

[viraptor]

MSI doesn't do dependencies though, does it? You can launch one installer from another, for example if you want to install a .net framework with the app, but they're completely unrelated afterwards. There's no built in mechanism for updating them either.

[erik_seaberg]

I thought you could depend on components from other packages that are either installed or advertised, but I don’t remember the details.