Our great sponsors
-
ble.sh
Bash Line Editor―a line editor written in pure Bash with syntax highlighting, auto suggestions, vim modes, etc. for Bash interactive sessions.
-
WorkOS
The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.
That comes from a zsh plug-in. Same can be done with bash using ble.sh.
As you mention, Portage solves this problem in its own way; I've upgraded Portage across multiple incompatible versions of Python (particularly the 2/3 divide) over the years and it has kept on chugging. On a similar note I've seen make implementations which build using makefiles, and the reference implementations of many languages (e.g. Rust) are written entirely in themselves, requiring a copy of the compiler in the first place to be able to compile the compiler.