A package format is a type of
archive
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual ...
containing computer programs and additional metadata needed by
package manager
A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner.
A package manager deals wi ...
s. While the
archive file format itself may be unchanged, package formats bear additional metadata, such as a
manifest file A manifest file in computing is a file containing metadata for a group of accompanying files that are part of a set or coherent unit. For example, the files of a computer program may have a manifest describing the name, version number, license and t ...
or certain directory layouts. Packages may contain either source code or
executable files.
Packages may be converted from one type to another with software such as
Alien
Alien primarily refers to:
* Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country
** Enemy alien, the above in times of war
* Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth
** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...
.
Common formats
Specialized formats
Generic formats
Arch Linux
Arch Linux () is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a rolling-release model. The default installation is a minimal base system, ...
's
Pacman and
Slackware
Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System, Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distributio ...
use
Tar archives with generic naming but specific internal structures.
References
Package management systems
{{Linux-stub