Package Management System - Functions

Functions

Package management systems are charged with the task of organizing all of the packages installed on a system. Typical functions of a package management system include:

  • Verifying file checksums to ensure correct and complete packages;
  • Verifying digital signatures to authenticate the origin of packages;
  • Applying file archivers to manage encapsulated files;
  • Upgrading software with latest versions, typically from a software repository;
  • Grouping of packages by function to reduce user confusion;
  • Managing dependencies to ensure a package is installed with all packages it requires. This resolved the problem known as Dependency Hell.

Some additional challenges are met by only a few package management systems.

Read more about this topic:  Package Management System

Famous quotes containing the word functions:

    The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others’ reasons for action, or the basis of others’ emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.
    Terri Apter (20th century)

    The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that there are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.
    Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)