Today, practically every operating system, language ecosystem, and framework has one or more package managers. Package managers are a, if not the, major way of taming software complexity, integrating various ecosystems, components, and versions and ensuring they are managed (installed/updated/uninstalled) safely, reliably, and in a compatible manner on user systems.

Because package managers bridge the gap between developers and the end user, developing them requires a broad range of expertise in multiple areas, including language runtimes, OS policies, distribution management, dependency solving, and developer workflows.

Packaging Con seeks to bring various package management communities together, as a venue to discuss challenges and exchange ideas. What makes communities work together on a particular software ecosystem? Are the differences among package managers mainly in the implementation language, or are there other key distinctions to software management methodology? How can we get better interoperability and/or cooperation among package manager teams, and what's missing/required to enable that? Is dependency resolution fundamentally the same problem across systems, or does each package manager do it differently?

If any of these questions interest you, we want to hear from you! Packaging Con is a conference for developers of software package management tools, as well as software packagers and communities! Anyone is welcome to participate. Our mission is to bring different software ecosystems together: from Python’s pip to Rust’s cargo, from apt, rpm, and Nix to conda and mamba, and from vcpkg to spack, and from fpm to npm.

Topics

We encourage submissions in a wide range of areas related to package management, including but not limited to:

• Deep dives on specific packaging systems
• Software supply chains, pipelines, and security
• Package build and release methodologies
• Modeling software ecosystems in package managers
• Modeling compatibility (semver, API/ABI analysis, etc.)
• Interactions between package managers
• Reproducibility in package managers
• Reliability/robustness of software ecosystems
• Dependency solving and management: modeling, methods, and scalability

This list is by no means exhaustive — any topic related to package management is welcome to attend.

Code of Conduct

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, pledge to make participation in Packaging Con a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of experience, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

By participating in the conference you agree to abide to the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct.

This Call for Papers closed on 2023-08-08 14:00 (Europe/Berlin).