Which general purpose package manager works correctly on Windows (not WSL, actual Windows) and Linux? Cross-platform is more important than not creating another package manager.
I think a far more interesting question is, does the package repository support falling back to e.g. curl. That would allow those who don't want another package manager to still use the registry.
You should distinguish between "can run on Windows" and "can manage Windows software as packages". Most package managers could probably run fine on Windows; at worst they could use cygwin or, indeed, WSL. Managing Windows software is much harder, but isn't necessary: This is a package manager for WebAssembly packages, not Windows packages or Linux packages.
And anyway, wasmer itself doesn't even support Windows.
Well, obviously both WSL and Cygwin run on Windows (and nowhere else), so, rhetoric aside, could you explain why they are they insufficient for your purposes?
Perhaps I don't want to install several GBs of invasive, hard to manage, and vulnerable linux dependencies to run a package manager unrelated to linux?
I'm not sure I understand the problem. Are you having to use all of these dozens of package managers, or is this more of a moral objection to the existence of similar but distinct things?
I have to deal with many of these regularly, yes. But more generally, I'm expressing a desire for fewer ecosystem-specific package managers and more ecosystem-agnostic package managers.
Right, but why? Generalization isn't free, and there doesn't seem to be any real benefit here. This sounds to me like arguing that there should be one programming language, or one version control system, or one declarative sysadmin automation language.
I think that the cost in complexity for one Uber package manager is greater than the waste in duplication from many smaller, more focused ones.
Because, among many other reasons, I work with a lot of projects that aren't written in just one programming language or use one type of environment. It's not just "I don't want to use five package managers for five different projects in five ecosystems", it's "I don't want to bridge between five package managers for one project that touches five ecosystems". (Or a project in one ecosystem with dependencies from another...)
AppFS [0] is cross-platform and general purpose. It should work on Windows via cxfuse [1], but I have not tested it. The data structure is simple and could also be handled by an offline fetching system.
I think a far more interesting question is, does the package repository support falling back to e.g. curl. That would allow those who don't want another package manager to still use the registry.