Comparison to similar tools

[monsdar]

Having a comparison page like Gitlab has (Gitlab Comparison) could help people decide on whether Conan is the right idea.

Some cases I can think of:

• Conan versus Linux package managers
• Conan versus VcPkg

My company uses mostly Linux and most developers are used to using the built-in package manager for their dependencies. When I present Conan to them I would like to have the right features on hand, so that acceptance is easier to achieve.

This issue could be a way to collect ideas - I'll create the docpage when I find some time during the next days.

[DavidZemon]

You can find a list of package managers here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27866965/does-c-have-a-package-manager-like-npm-pip-gem-etc

[markgalpin]

This is a task in my backlog -- it will probably be a few months before I get to it, but in the meantime I'd love to have people chime in: What sort of information would people want to see about them? What package managers should I consider? Thanks again @DavidZemon for that super helpful stackoverflow link...

[DavidZemon]

When my team was evaluating package manager tools, we decided that we needed to categorize them into two groups: runtime and developmet package managers. There are some that could possibly potentially maybe be used as both, but for the most part they remain separate. We are in need of both, so we put them both in one table and listed out our requirements. Here's the criteria we came up with:

Development

• Remote binary artifact repository
• Support user-configurable build steps (by this we just mean build-system agnostic)
• Configurable package root
• Simultaneous multi-architecture support (so compiling for one architecture doesn't overwrite the object files or artifacts for another architecture)
• Simultaneous multi-version support (so compiling version 2 of libA doesn't overwrite the object files or artifacts for version 1 of libA)
• Offline compilation (gotta be able to build my project on an airplane or in the Sahara)

Runtime

• Separate declaration of compile and runtime dependencies
• Easy package removal (aka, the package manager needs to know which files belong to which packages so that a package can be safely removed)
• Offline package installation (Gotta be able to install packages from a file, not just a remote repository)

This list is by no means complete, but I think it's a solid start. Worth mentioning would also be licensing, whether or not multiple remote repositories is supported, and whether or not those remote repositories can be hosted internally or in the cloud.

[DavidZemon]

We started investigating the following tools:

• dpkg/apt-get
• rpm/yum
• docker (yea.... we thought about using docker as a package manager :P)
• nix
• opkg
• Conan (yay conan!!!)
• Custom Maven plugin
• Gradle
• CPM