[mountainriver]

I still find it basically impossible to get started with a C++ project.

I tried again recently for a proxy I was writing thinking surely things have evolved at this point. Every single package manager couldn’t handle my very basic and very popular dependencies. I mean I tried every single one. This is completely insane to me.

Not to mention just figuring out how to build it after that which was a massive headache and an ongoing one.

Compared to Rust it’s just night and day.

Outside of embedded programming or some special use cases I have literally no idea why anyone would ever write C++. I’m convinced it’s a bunch of masochists

[morsecodist]

Agreed. I have had almost the same experience. The package management and building alone makes Rust worth it for me.

[runevault]

When I've dabbled in C++ recently it has felt like using CMake fetching github repos has been the least painful thing I've tried (dabbled in vcpkg and conan a bit), since most libraries are cmake projects.

I am no expert so take it with a grain of salt, but that was how it felt for me.

[kylereeve]

Do you have CMake actually run `git clone`, or do you clone separately and point CMake at the `FIND_X` files?

[runevault]

I was using fetch content or the like, there is a package that comes after a certain version of cmake where you can tell it this is a git repo and it handles all that for you. It has been a few months since I did this so I don't remember the details fully

[almostgotcaught]

> Every single package manager couldn’t handle my very basic and very popular dependencies

Well there's your problem - no serious project uses one.

> I’m convinced it’s a bunch of masochists

People use cpp because it's a mature language with mature tooling and an enormous number of mature libraries. Same exact reason anyone uses any language for serious work.

[cratermoon]

How can you simultaneously call cpp a mature language with mature tooling and acknowledge that there's no working package manager used by any "serious" project?

[const_cast]

Package managers per language are a (relatively) new endeavor. The oldest language I can think of that widely adopted it was Perl. Although, perl was quite ahead of it's time in a lot of ways, and php undid some the work of perl and went back to popularizing include type dependencies instead of formal modules with a package manager.

C++ "gets away" with it because of templates. Many (most?) libraries are mostly templates, or at the very least contain templates. So you're forced into include-style dependencies and it's pretty painless. For a good library, it's often downloading a single file and just #include-ing it.

C++ is getting modules now, and maybe that will spur a new interest in package managers. Or maybe not, it might be too late.

[simonask]

It's a relatively new endeavor, but it's also a requirement in 2025 if you want to be portable. The Linux ecosystem was focusing on installing dependencies system-wide for decades (that's how traditional `./configure.sh` expects things to work), and this approach is just inferior in so many ways.

The shenanigans people get into with CMake, Conan, vcpkg, and so on is a patchwork of nightmares and a huge time sink compared to superior solutions that people have gotten used to in other languages, including Rust.

[pjmlp]

Try to use cargo in a polyglot build and you will get into shenanigans as well, and I have already seen enough clever build.rs files.

[const_cast]

I don't think it's a requirement and it does actually come with it's own set of foot guns. The problem is that these design decisions impact culture, which is why JS has a culture of importing far too many third-party packages. Which comes with it's own set of risks.

I agree overall that the C or C++ way of doing things is more cumbersome, but I don't think that's enough to write off those languages as a whole.

[simonask]

Certainly not enough to write them off on its own, but it is one of many problems.

[zelphirkalt]

C++ is _getting_ modules now? You must be kidding. How can this language, that adds more and more and more features every couple of years _still_ not have one of the most fundamental way to modularize code, splitting it into semantic units? Like ... what?! I did not think C++ would be that bad when it comes to foundational aspects of a programming language. This must be the result of silly obsession with OOP. The typical misuse of "we have classes, we don't need modules!". What other explanation could there possibly be for lacking such basic means of code organization.

[steveklabnik]

Modules were added in C++20, but it's taken them this long to be implemented. Right now, only MSVC has full support according to https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/20

[pjmlp]

Anyone that cares about C++ package managers is already happily using vcpkg or conan, it is a solved problem.

[tdiff]

Because cpp is not meant for "rapid prototyping" involving importing half of github with single command. And the reality is that it works.

[simonask]

Works for whom?

C++ build systems are notoriously brittle. When porting a project to a new platform, you're never just porting the code, you are also porting your build system. Every single project is bespoke in some way, sometimes because of taste, but most of the time because of necessity.

It works because people spend a huge amount of time to make it work.

[affyboi]

> Works for whom?

FAANG, hedge funds/HFT, game studios

[tubs]

This seems hyperbolic. At work we cross compile the same code for a decent number of different platform - six different OS (Linux Mac windows and some embedded ones) over 20odd cpu architectures.

It’s the same build system for all of them.

[tdiff]

Works for numerous projects which "run the world".

Everyone know the system is brittle, but somehow manage to handle it.

[pjmlp]

For starters it works for Rust, given that its compiler depends on LLVM, and eventually GCC as well.

[guappa]

apt install xxxxx-dev

[almostgotcaught]

Do you people really not realize how completely asinine you sound with these lowbrow comments? I'll give you a hint: did you know that C also has no package manager?

[adgjlsfhk1]

Yeah, and it's also much worse for it. There's a reason everyone in C uses their own linked list implementation and it's not because it's a platonic ideal of perfect software.

[almostgotcaught]

The question wasn't whether C/C++ are platonic ideals, the question was whether a language can be mature without a package manager.

[josephg]

If we take “mature” to mean “old” then yes - C and C++ are certainly old. If we take “mature” to mean “good”, then my answer changes.

[ValtteriL]

Felt the same pain with vcpkg. Ended up using OS packages and occasionally simply downloading a pure header based dependency.

With Nix, the package selection is great and repackaging is fairly straight forward.