You’re correct, of course — the tasks have to run in a certain order. I can vaguely imagine a config manager that calculates dependencies between the tasks before executing them, kinda like apt does. However, considering the complex relations between various kinds of things like packages, files, keys in a database like Gnome’s settings, running programs, etc., I doubt that it would be feasible to do that. One would have to describe the entirety of these relations for a program, in a format understandable by the manager — or at the very least write a bunch of checks for the prerequisites. Idk if anything like Nix attempts this kind of thing.
You’re correct, of course — the tasks have to run in a certain order. I can vaguely imagine a config manager that calculates dependencies between the tasks before executing them, kinda like apt does. However, considering the complex relations between various kinds of things like packages, files, keys in a database like Gnome’s settings, running programs, etc., I doubt that it would be feasible to do that. One would have to describe the entirety of these relations for a program, in a format understandable by the manager — or at the very least write a bunch of checks for the prerequisites. Idk if anything like Nix attempts this kind of thing.