One option that I see is to create a compiler plugin interface that lets a build tool/package manager hook the compiler's import resolution process.
A very (very) basic implementation: (windows only) https://github.com/yebblies/dmd/tree/importresolve For those who don't want to read the source code: The user (or the build tool, or in sc.ini/dmd.conf) supplies a dll/so on the command line with: dmd -ih=mylib.dll Which exports a single function "_importhandler" that is called when a file is not found on the include path. It passes the module name and the contents of the describing pragma, if any. eg. pragma(libver, "collection", "version", "hash") import xpackage.xmodule; calls filename = importhandler("xpackage.xmodule", "collection", "version", "hash") and lets the library download, update etc, and return the full filename of the required library.
