(18-01-2020, 07:34 PM)jkl Wrote: I wish there was one way to manage dependencies for all platforms.

pkgsrc is a step toward that. It is the package manager from netbsd, but can be used on many (posix) platforms, including minix.

Package management is a complex topic as different people have different needs.
The only assumption you can have is that everyone will want the manager to not get in their way. This is why debian has the "apt" frontend for dpkg, or yum/dnf for rpms. This is why most of the time "$TOOL install/remove whatever" will work as expected. They follow the principle of least surprise. Unfortunately, such simplicity in the interface/usage comes at the cost of complexity on the packaging side. The packages are cluttered with metadata, pre/post install scripts and so on and so forth.
This is where the user steps in, as some "power users" will want better control over what they install and have the ability to easily review packages amd their dependencies.

I personally care more about having a simple packaging format, than a good dependency handling, mostly because I prefer software that have the least amount of dependencies. I made my own package manager for this purpose, because it lets me review the softwareI fetch, package jt the way I want and install it where I want, with the privileges I set (most of my tools are installed under my UID, in $HOME/.local).
This obviously comes at the cost of having to fetch updates manually, which (for now) is a bit of a burden. But the simplicity of.packaging overweight this for me.