Hello All,

I know I have asked this before, but I am curious about any new replies or insight.  How did package management start?  Were sites keeping track of packages installed in a flat file that you could grep (as god intended) somewhere, or were upgrades and additions simply done without significant announcement?  At what point did someone decide, 'Hey, we need to have a central way to track additional software"?

I know of DEC's setld and SGI's inst in the latter half of the '80s.  What was the mechanism before that?

-Henry