Package manager cooperation? (was Weaknesses of distro package managers)

[Rustom Mody]

On Tuesday, March 17, 2015 at 8:10:16 AM UTC+5:30, Ben Finney wrote:
> Thanks for discussing this, Michael.
> 
> Michael Torrie  writes:
> 
> > For developers things are even more grim. Package managers certainly
> > don't work so well for third-party apps like VirtualBox, LibreOffice,
> > Firefox, etc. Part of the issue is the multiple moving targets distros
> > present in terms of what's available in the system. It's so bad in
> > fact that major projects that offer binary packages on their web sites
> > end up bundling copies of libraries they use, such as GTK, SSL, etc.
> 
> In my experience it's far more extensive than that. The trend seems to
> be to bundle every third-party library with one's own work, and dump it
> all in the end-user's lap.
> 
> > This is how VirtualBox, Firefox, and LibreOffice all do it. It works
> 
> It "works fine" only if you ignore:

I believe the problem is that package-managers will multiply and proliferate.
Will they insist on warring or can they cooperate?

eg Lets take it that apt is the most mature, stable etc package manager.
But its also the most backward in the sense of being downstream.

OTOH many large-scale systems have sprouted their own packaging-systems

eg the full texlive system is some 2GB download! and has its own tlmgr

It would be good for things like apt to make a public-API and thereafter
For things like tlmgr, firefox-plugins, and of course
python-pip
ruby-gems
haskell-cabal
etc etc

to try to be at least quasi-auto interoperable with apt