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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