Most modern operating systems (including iOS, Android, macOS, and ChromeOS) have been using image-based architectures for a while, and in recent years we’ve been making progress towards this on the desktop side as well. It’s a necessity if we want to provide the security, usability and reliability that people expect from their devices nowadays. However,...
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)