> use package repos ...? If one used a Lisp system at MIT in the 80s, probably. The typical Lisp Machine at MIT was networked and shared file servers (also fr

> use package repos ...? If one used a Lisp system at MIT in the 80s, probably. The typical Lisp Machine at MIT was networked and shared file servers (also from other types of machines). When one uses a Lisp Machine on the network, one uses a name server (not DNS or NIS, which did not exist at that time) which define one or more sites. The site information in the name server provides information about machines, services, users, printers etc. In the 80s the MIT network was already vast with hundreds of machines. It was basically similar to what Unix system did with mounted NFS volumes, but here built into the Lisp system. This was before TCP/IP, when Lisp Machines used the CHAOS protocol for networking. Now when one wanted to load some software into a Lisp Machine, one uses a command like 'Load System FOO', where FOO is the name of the system. The Lisp Machine shares with other machines a central registry for system names, which then point to a location in the file system. So this would find the system definition, load it and then load the system components. One could also ask it to load a specific version or load a specific patch level - or just the newest version. A system could also have other files like documentation, C files, etc.. There was also a way to write those to tape or an archive format and transfer it that way. Thus that was a networked repository for libraries and applications. Some of those libraries were shared across different machine types and Lisp dialects. For example the LOOP feature was a library sharing source code with Maclisp, Zetalisp, NIL, etc. So you could load this from a central location into different Lisp systems - not just Lisp Machines.