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A guide to packaging systems

Software packaging systems are a strange phenomenon. They all seem to aim at solving the general problem of shipping some named, versioned collection of files to the world. Yet, this common ground seems insufficient given the overwhelming number of incompatible packaging systems in the wild.

The ???overwhelming??? part of above is what we need to talk about. Specifically, despite having similar goals, one package system is rather unlikely to have anything in common with another. Different terminologies, different tools, different technologies, different distribution mechanisms, different policies. The side effect with this phenomenon of ???similar goal, nothing meaningful in common??? is that you get punished.

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