What Julia Does Right

[rikki cattermole]

On 11/12/2022 2:41 PM, Greggor wrote:
> Github, Gitea instances & Fossil all have a way of providing a zip file 
> for releases, src zips are already a near universal method of publishing 
> code. So this theoretical package manager can be really fast and light, 
> its basically an over gloried text search & download tool.

The dub-registry abstracts that and provides zips for dub to download.

In an ideal world we can yes just download zips of sources and build. 
But we don't live in an ideal world. Builds are complicated. Sometimes 
you need to specify versions, run pre-build steps, use specific flags, 
exclude some sources for specific targets ext. Build managers hide all 
that from users so it is as simple as specifying a dependency and hit build.

But the biggest cost in dub is the searching of the registry for 
packages. ``--skip-registry=all`` is a massive speed up. Although there 
is work going into speeding it up it won't be quite as massive as 
caching the registry locally.