> Out of curiosity which project did you run into this with?

Their WebRTC library for the most part, but also the gRPC C++ library. Unlike WebRTC, grpc++ is in most package managers so the need to build it myself is less, but WebRTC is a behemoth and not in any package manager.

> That said, isn't the only alternative for them moving to something like nix? Otherwise how do you tightly specify the build environment?

I don't expect my libraries to tightly specify the build environment. I expect my libraries to conform to my software's build environment, to use versions of other libraries that I provide to it, etc etc. I don't mind that Google builds their application software the way they do, Google Chrome should tightly constrain its build environment if Google wants; but their libraries should fit in to my environment.

I'm wondering, what is your relationship with Google software that you build from source? Are you building their libraries to integrate with your own applications, or do you just build Google's applications from source and use them as-is?