• Package management (was Re: VMS on Raspberry Pi 5)

    From Dan Cross@3:770/3 to invalid@invalid.invalid on Fri Nov 17 13:30:00 2023
    XPost: comp.os.vms

    In article <wwvy1ew7md9.fsf@LkoBDZeT.terraraq.uk>,
    Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    [snip]
    System V’s packages were, what, 1990 or so? So nearer a third of its >current age I would say. I’m not even sure they were the first.

    Maybe; it depends on how you define "package." Two things
    happened in relatively close temporal proximity that contributed
    here: 1) we had vendors shipping closed-source Unix
    distributions coupled with their hardware; and 2) we started to
    have networks of Unix machines at a single site.

    With these, it became pretty clear that we'd need some kind of
    principled way to build deploy and maintain third-party software
    packages and configuration data; a number of different
    mechanisms were invented, some ad hoc and based on convention,
    others based on the idea of bundling up "packages" (which could
    help OEMs and third-party software vendors distribute their
    software). Work for this really started heating up in the mid-
    to late-80s.

    - Dan C.

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