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

[Michael Torrie]

On 03/16/2015 09:09 PM, Rustom Mody wrote:
> OTOH many large-scale systems have sprouted their own packaging-systems

And indeed PIP and CPAN are both forms of package managers to fit the
special needs of those languages' developers. Sometimes that works well
with the OS package manager, sometimes it's at odds.

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

A meta package manager could, in theory, interact with all these systems
in a unified way.  That's certainly one approach.