Git, the D package manager

[Dicebot via Digitalmars-d]

Quick summary of my opinion can look like this:

1) dub is a horrible build tool
2) git submodules is a horrible way for dependency management

First thing is something we can improve on in future and, 
actually, dub supports using rdmd as a build tool already.

Second thing is an inherent issue that won't change without some 
fundamental breaking changes in how hit submodules are 
implemented.

Because of that I am trying to push dub despite the fact I don't 
like lot of things about it personally.

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Explaining why dub is a horrible build tool is hardly necessary - 
there are plenty of cases in this thread already.

So why git submodules don't really work?

1) Lack of version management

submodule remembers specific commit hash and that is all. As of 
recent git version one can also remember remote tracking branch 
(but it will still keep specific hash in history!)

This may not seem an issue if you have only few dependencies and 
control them all. But it scales badly once bulding the project 
needs many incompatible versions of the same dependency and 
dependency count increases in general.

2) Lack of local cache

This is really annoying when working with many project with 
similar dependencies - those will get cloned over and over again, 
taking quite some time. Can possibly be fixed with clever scripts 
that replace remotes with local repo paths but that is not 
out-of-the box solution

3) Lack of package repository

Biggest thing about dub is not dub tool itself. It is 
code.dlang.org and what it can become in future. Providing simple 
centralized way to discover new libraries and quickly try those 
in uniform matter is the way you build decentralized ecosystem 
(ironically).

With git submodules you are pretty much stick with doing GitHub 
search over and over again

4) Inherently coupled with specific DVCS

git and GitHub are most common (and officially endorsed) ways of 
version control in D world but those are not the only one. dub 
registry allows to use GitHub, GitBucket and source tarball 
packages in the same project - in simple uniform matter. It is a 
100% in-house tool that does no depend on decisions of external 
project maintainers that provides a common API for everything 
else to interoperate