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

[Mark Lawrence]

On 17/03/2015 03:32, Michael Torrie wrote:
> 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.
>

Wouldn't that be heading into a meta minefield?  Isn't the problem that 
package managers are trying to solve that of configuration management? 
How many installations have to change world wide because of one serious 
bug in (say) OpenSSL?

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence