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Ask HN: Were There Precursors to CPAN?
I had occasion to run CPAN to install some modules today, and I was wondering - were there dependency managers before CPAN that could know what additional dependencies needed to be installed and automate the whole process? I have worked with npm and yum and deb and maven etc, which are kind of comparable, and came later. Did Larry Wall or someone just invent this, or were there precursors?
- thesuperbigfrog 3y agoCPAN's name directly comes from CTAN, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network: http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/H/HF/HFB/grok-cpan-1.01.pdf http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/H/HF/HFB/grok-cpan-1.01.pdf CTAN: https://www.ctan.org/ https://www.ctan.org/
- jtotheh 3y agoThank you.
- rurban 3y agoAnd it wasn't Larry. It was Andreas Koenig with Jarkko Hietaniemi.