It's not reasonable to expect every software in existence to work with a compatible set of dependencies. So no, the distro can't supply all the libraries.

What happens is that distro developers spend their time patching the upstream so it works with the set included on the distro. This has some arguable benefits to any user that wants to rebuild their software, at the cost of random problems added by that patching that flies under the radar of the upstream developers.

Instead, the GPs proposal of vendoring the dependencies solves that problem, without breaking the compilation, and adds another set of issues that may or may not be a problem. I do argue that it's a good option to keep on one's mind to apply when necessary.

> It's not reasonable to expect every software in existence to work with a compatible set of dependencies. So no, the distro can't supply all the libraries.

That is not what it's being asked.

As a developer, you just need to provide the code and the list of requirements. And maybe some guide about how to build and run tests. You do not want to care about where I find those dependencies (Maybe I'm running you code as PID 1).

But a lot of developers want to be maintainers as well and they want to enforce what can be installed on the user's system. (And no I don't want docker and multiple versions of nginx)