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From: arnold@skeeve.com
To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org, henry.r.bent@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Package Management
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2020 10:50:47 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <202011211750.0ALHolUI011814@freefriends.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAEdTPBcYUi61_5U3WiunnxphfbLw_xU+3_xLRAb2KSanwJwhBw@mail.gmail.com>

Things were pretty much ad hoc.  Commercial software likely came
as tar/cpio tapes to install however the vendor wanted. Free software
was from USENET in source code, so again, however people wanted.

The AT&T Unix PC (7300 / 3B1) in the late 80s had a file format
for installing software from floppy and tracked what was installed,
but that was unique to it.

Package managers as we know them today really became a big thing
with Linux. Redhat's RPM was one of the earliest.

My two cents; I'm sure others remember it differently.

Arnold

Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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


  parent reply	other threads:[~2020-11-21 18:54 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-11-20 21:32 Henry Bent
2020-11-21  0:55 ` Jeremy C. Reed
2020-11-21 17:50 ` arnold [this message]
2020-11-21 23:30   ` Gregg Levine
2020-11-22  1:17     ` Clem Cole
2020-11-22  1:39       ` Warner Losh
2020-11-24  7:35         ` Stuart Remphrey
2020-11-21 22:23 ` Clem Cole
2020-11-21 23:24   ` G. Branden Robinson
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2017-01-24  4:27 Henry Bent
2017-01-24 17:06 ` Clem Cole
2017-01-24 17:46   ` Henry Bent
2017-01-24 18:58     ` Tim Bradshaw

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