> The Debian model of an artisanal handcrafted build for every library is just not sustainable.
Yet it has functioned for 25 years (apt turned 25 this year). There has been mistakes, like the OpenSSL "fix", but not many. One issue that I, now that you mention Javascript, is stuff like npm, but to me that more a sign of npm being badly broken by design, or at least designed for a different environment. Build Python projects on Debian, using apt as you dependency manager works pretty well for systems that you expect to be stable over time.
One think so seems to forget is that you can often pull in newer versions of libraries and other packages from Backports. That does mitigate some of the issues with packages being to old.
Yet it has functioned for 25 years (apt turned 25 this year). There has been mistakes, like the OpenSSL "fix", but not many. One issue that I, now that you mention Javascript, is stuff like npm, but to me that more a sign of npm being badly broken by design, or at least designed for a different environment. Build Python projects on Debian, using apt as you dependency manager works pretty well for systems that you expect to be stable over time.
One think so seems to forget is that you can often pull in newer versions of libraries and other packages from Backports. That does mitigate some of the issues with packages being to old.