Editing Package manager (section)

== History ==
An early package manager was SMIT (and its backend installp) from [[IBM AIX]]. [[System Management Interface Tool|SMIT]] was introduced with AIX 3.0 in 1989.{{Citation needed|date=July 2007}}

Early package managers, from around 1994, had no automatic dependency resolution<ref>{{cite web |url=https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/the-history-of-nix-package-management/ |title=The history of *nix package management |date=14 August 2017 |access-date=12 October 2021 |archive-date=24 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211024173626/https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/the-history-of-nix-package-management/ |url-status=live }}</ref> but could already drastically simplify the process of adding and removing software from a running system.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/60 |title=A review of InfoMagic's December 1994 Release |access-date=12 October 2021 |archive-date=29 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211029171535/https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/60 |url-status=live }}</ref>

By around 1995, beginning with [[Comprehensive Perl Archive Network|CPAN]], package managers began doing the work of downloading packages from a repository, automatically resolving its dependencies and installing them as needed, making it much easier to install, uninstall and update software from a system.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html |title=The Timeline of Perl and its Culture |access-date=29 October 2021 |archive-date=11 January 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130111100906/http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html |url-status=live }}</ref>