On Tuesday, 23 November 2021 at 13:49:36 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
> How do you propose dub would do that

By asking the system package manager.

On Tue, 2021-11-23 at 01:19 +0000, Alain De Vos via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> What i don't like about dub is that is does not check which
> software is installed on the host.
> Currentlu tck86 is installed on the host including header files &
> shared libraries.
> But dub says let me just download my own personal version and i
> will compile it in your home directory
> /home/myuser/.dub
> There is something inherently wrong in doing so.
> 
> Note other package managers of different languages do the same
> thing.
> dub should really check if something should really be downloaded.
> Otherwise you end up in a library hell, in Gates words known as
> dll hell.

I can totally understand your point on this. I think dub lacks a lot of important features and behave wrongly in a lot of different ways:

1) it should search for dependencies instead of downloading and
compiling them.
2) it should have/use a standard user and system path or pkg-config to
check for dependencies
3) it should use XDG base directory paths to store cache, config and
data files.
4) if the user prefers to download and compile the dependencies, it
should provide a mechanism to isolate the environment
5) it should use a correct mechanism to do incremental compilation
instead of compiling everything in one compiler invocation by default
6) it should be able to install packages correctly with pkg-config or
other similar mechanisms, providing a correct way for the packagers to
manage dependencies externally

I have some strong opinions on this. These are some real problems of dub that I see as a blocker. Doing packaging right is the cornerstone of a growing and healthy ecosystem.

-- 
Sincerely,
Luís Ferreira @ lsferreira.net

On Tuesday, 23 November 2021 at 14:01:15 UTC, Adam D Ruppe wrote:
> On Tuesday, 23 November 2021 at 13:49:36 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>> How do you propose dub would do that
>
> By asking the system package manager.

Well yeah, but how without doing a lot of work

On Tue, 2021-11-23 at 17:36 +0000, Imperatorn via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> On Tuesday, 23 November 2021 at 14:01:15 UTC, Adam D Ruppe wrote:
> > On Tuesday, 23 November 2021 at 13:49:36 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
> > > How do you propose dub would do that
> > 
> > By asking the system package manager.
> 
> Well yeah, but how without doing a lot of work

If I iterpret system package manager as distribution-specific, relying on system package manager is not the way. There is tools like pkg- config or pkgconf that provides mechanisms to manage dependencies and its required configurations to link/compile the library with the dependent software.

-- 
Sincerely,
Luís Ferreira @ lsferreira.net