Packaging software for Linux users is a nightmare. Unless
- your program is extraordinarily simple
- you can manage to statically link libc
- you can ship (or statically link) all .so files
- you can ensure your app can run in a sandbox
- you limit the distros you build for
- your app can be built by whatever is on flathub
etc., most solutions to shipping software simply don't work out-of-the-box. Despite the kernel being reasonably stable, userspace APIs are a mess of incompatible.
This is a great point, and you are right. However, using cpack+cmake makes the packaging pretty easy, gets the dependencies right for you. The problem is in dealing with all the package various manager repos.
- your program is extraordinarily simple
- you can manage to statically link libc
- you can ship (or statically link) all .so files
- you can ensure your app can run in a sandbox
- you limit the distros you build for
- your app can be built by whatever is on flathub
etc., most solutions to shipping software simply don't work out-of-the-box. Despite the kernel being reasonably stable, userspace APIs are a mess of incompatible.