Talk:Package manager

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Computing: Software Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Software (assessed as Low-importance).

I don't know about other editors here, but it's been a long time since I've seen a Debian-based system with 'only' hundreds of packages available (or even installed simultaneously!). Shouldn't we at least mention that many modern systems have tens of thousands of packages? Right now the lead says, "... based on Linux and other Unix-like systems, typically consisting of hundreds or even thousands of distinct software packages; ..." At the moment, my system has 2043 packages installed and 69148 other packages not installed. And I use a FSF-sponsored distro which only includes free software packages! BlueGuy213 (talk) 21:47, 21 May 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hello! Well, it all depends on what's looked at; for example, a typical OpenWrt installation doesn't use too many packages. It isn't only about full-fledged general-purpose Linux distributions; however, this edit should help in making it more gerenally applicable. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:23, 12 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Needs updating as fails to mention FPM, i.e. yet another effing package manager next generation ;-) 167.98.51.116 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:33, 8 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

There should be some mention/explanation of the packager or package generator in this article. Can anyone knowledgeable contribute something in that direction? --Trickstar (talk) 15:28, 26 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

This article is heavily biased towards Linux. It completely fails to mention other Unix-like OS package managers like [[|Image Packaging System|IPS]] (Solaris), PBI (TrueOS/PC-BSD derivatives), FreeBSD ports/pkgng (FreeBSD), pkgsrc (OpenBSD and more).

Besides that, the article is also obsolete in failing to mention the new universal Linux package managers like Snap, AppImage, Flatpak (the only one that is at least linked from the article) and others.

I'll try to change the article to at least mention the above mentioned, but I guess I'll more or less just tag it appropriately. Any thoughts?

--Arny (talk) 13:06, 14 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Completely agree. I personally thought that it doesn't talk much about macOS package managers such as Homebrew/MacPorts or Windows ones like Chocolatey/Scoop. It's something I'd like to improve on at some point. PonyDuck21 (talk) 15:28, 2 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Completely agree that Linux should not be considered the only system. Probably a dedicated page titled "Package Managers for Linux Distributibutions" would be more appropriate. Anyway Alpine Linux [| "apk"] is currently missing among them, and is a very nice one!

Under "Impact" section, Ian Murdock is quoted, and the quote ends by a self-published source tag. As the guideline tells: "Self-published sources may be considered reliable if published by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.". Ian Murdock is the founder of Debian, and the original author of dpkg, hence I think we can assume he had enough expertise in the filed of package management.

Also "Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.", He had passed that too.

Khaled Khalil (talk) 16:14, 15 December 2025 (UTC)Reply