A package manager, is a utility designed to manage your systems packages. The regular functions of a package manager are:
- Installing packages
- Removing packages
- Updating packages
- Provide package information
- Searching package repositories
- And adding/removing/updating package repositories
List of known package managers
All of the package managers below, unless explicitly stated, will also be carried on through their forks (for example: Debian's apt will also be in Ubuntu, and so will Ubuntu's apt be in Linux Mint, etc.)
- pacman is used in Arch Linux and maintained by the Arch Linux team. You can find the source code here.
- apt is used by Debian and is maintained by the Debian team. You can find the source code here.
- Portage is developed and maintained the Gentoo Linux team, you can find the source code here.
- Nix can be used in any distribution but you can find it commonly in NixOS, it is also maintained by the NixOS Foundation. You can find the source code here.