I was watching a Decentralized Systems course and there was a statement: Git was developed for Linux (a kernel, zero-dependency software) that's one of the reasons why managing dependencies is out of scope (submodules are a trainwreck).
Guix and Nix are basically just an extension of Git, which uses git itself as a database for storing dependency information in plain text format and requires external infrastructure to deal with it.
Looks like a huge overhead in terms of performance and complexity for dependency management.
I feel like Unison Lang is moving in right direction on this topic, but I also hope for some more general and widespread improvements in this area.
@abcdw They're also build systems and very general but opinionated package managers and configuration managers.
`fetchGit` and fixed-output derivations are only a small part of Nix that fits your description as an extension of Git.