Package Managers à la Carte: A Formal Model of Dependency Resolution
2026/02/20 by Ryan Gibb, Patrick Ferris, David Allsopp +2 · 11 voices
#cs.PL #cs.SE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1145/3828699
Abstract
Package managers are legion. Every programming language and operating system has its own solution, each with subtly different semantics for dependency resolution. This fragmentation prevents multilingual projects from expressing precise dependencies across language ecosystems; it leaves external system dependencies implicit and unversioned; and it obscures the full dependency graph that supply-chain analysis depends on. We present the Package Calculus, a formalism for dependency resolution that unifies the core semantics of package managers. Through a series of formal reductions, we show how this core is expressive enough to model the diversity of real-world dependency expression languages. The calculus provides the theoretical foundation for future cross-ecosystem tooling, as a lingua franca of dependency expression.
Citations
Discussions
- Package Managers à la Carte: A Formal Model of Dependency Resolution [lobsters, 78 points, 10 comments]
- Package Managers à la Carte: a formal model of dependency resolution [hn, 55 points, 17 comments]
- "Package Managers à la Carte, A Formal Model of Dependency Resolution" preprint out today: a new package calculus to describe the cambrian explosion of systems that exist today arxiv.org/pdf/2602.1860 [bsky, 22 points, 2 comments]
- "Package Managers à la Carte, A Formal Model of Dependency Resolution" preprint out today: a new package calculus to describe the cambrian explosion of systems that exist today https://arxiv.org/pdf/2 [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
- Package Managers à la Carte: a formal model of dependency resolution https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.18602 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- It takes some serious guts to name a theorem in CS "... a la' carte." The original, on "Build Systems," is incredibly well-respected, and if you don't hit that mark it looks more like you're riding co [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- recien salido del horno, todavia no lo lei pero si sigue el espiritu del que linkeas debe estar bueno: arxiv.org/abs/2602.18602 [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
- Package Managers à la Carte: A Formal Model of Dependency Resolution arxiv.org/abs/2602.18602 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- https://bsky.app/profile/lobste.rs.web.brid.gy/post/3mfwumfomnt22 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Package Managers à la Carte: a formal model of dependency resolution https:// arxiv.org/abs/2602.18602 # arxiv [mastodon, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Package Managers à la Carte: A Formal Model of Dependency Resolution https://lobste.rs/s/fm1eln #compsci [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
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