Products · Broad category
Package managers
Raised as a usability problem by 17 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 18 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Upgrading one package manager breaks others, requiring lengthy manual repairUnreviewed
20122026- Mixing package manager and manual installs causes undiagnosable errors; hidden changes break things2020-01-28
- Too many overlapping package managers cause confusion and conflicting installed versions2018-07-29
- Installing software through package managers breaks or hoses the system, forcing reinstalls2018-05-08
Each language's package manager must be learned before using a simple libraryUnreviewed
20122026- Each language's package manager must be installed and learned before using a simple library2024-07-18
- Learning a new package manager for each language is tedious; package managers have poor UX2019-08-22
- Package managers make managing transitive library dependencies painful and error-prone2019-01-03
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 18 complaints
- Users must pick among many package managers and run several commands to install2026-06-23
- Each language's package manager must be installed and learned before using a simple library2024-07-18
- Installing software needs terminal commands and clicking .deb files does nothing2022-07-20
- PPAs need separate repos for every Ubuntu release, and packages are often missing or stale2022-06-09
- No simple UI to set up auto-updates for a single app; needs shell and console skills2021-05-24
- Version conflicts and obtuse configuration files make starting new projects hard to navigate2020-04-15
- Mixing package manager and manual installs causes undiagnosable errors; hidden changes break things2020-01-28
- Learning a new package manager for each language is tedious; package managers have poor UX2019-08-22
- Package managers make managing transitive library dependencies painful and error-prone2019-01-03
- Too many overlapping package managers cause confusion and conflicting installed versions2018-07-29
- Installing software through package managers breaks or hoses the system, forcing reinstalls2018-05-08
- Switching between package managers means consulting docs or guessing before destructive commands2018-01-19
- Installing Node on Linux and Mac requires hoops, with broken installs and no easy upgrades2017-01-21
- Cryptic dependency errors that are hard to diagnose and poorly documented2016-10-06
- Must mouse-copy package names from search output to install them2015-11-08
- Upgrading one package manager breaks others, requiring lengthy manual repair of the whole setup2015-04-26
- Dependency hell makes setting up front-end web project tools horrendously difficult2014-08-26
- Installing tools takes long delays and breaks when Xcode is upgraded2012-02-16