Tools can not depend on other tools. One of the issues with traditional distributions is dependency resolution and package management (this is subcategory of a heavily discussed topic, I also talked about it in my LAS talk from 2025. We should avoid making individual packages or having dependencies between tools, to avoid all the unnecessary complexity that comes with it.

I was getting excited about this, but this point might be a big dealbreaker. The C compiler for example will need to find manually installed headers and library files when you need to compile more than a hello world, and often tightly interacts with pkg-config, cmake etc.

I fear you’d have to be working in a container anyway for some scenarios, unless there’s some other parts not explained in the post.

I’m also not a fan of the possible gatekeeping of who can create these tools, via signing and trusted repositories, but it’s probably going to be fine in the end.

TBH toolbx is quite a good environment to work in already. I would just have liked a bit more sandboxing though (i.e. have a way for it to not mount my home)