OSDev.org

Out of curiosity, has anyone implemented package managers in their OSes?

Several.

My first "package manager" was little more than a manifest of files to download. This grew to the point where most packages were a single tarball.

My second iteration introduced a dedicated format for tarballs with an integrated metadata description, but it was written in Python and relied heavily on some tricks the "tarfile" module provided.

When I rewrote my userspace to remove third-party dependencies, I essentially went back to the first concept, though I've consistently used tarballs for package contents. I am actively working to move back to the dedicated package file format.

Are the tarballs stored on the system and expanded when installed, or are they stored on the internet and retreived?

PavelCheckov wrote:Are the tarballs stored on the system and expanded when installed, or are they stored on the internet and retreived?

The latter. Storing them on the disk would take way too much disk space