# packages

Phix:
Does not yet have any kind of package manager, unless you count PCAN (I don’t).
Python: pip... (pretty good, but I have absolutely no idea how that whole infrastructure works)
Julia:
ERROR: LoadError: ArgumentError: Package Images not found in current path.
Run `import Pkg; Pkg.add("Images")` to install the Images package.
It is a little buried in the output, and one has to wonder why it is not automated/prompted. Once it gets going it
is very good, but astonishingly slow, then again you can see it /is/ installing an absolute shedload of stuff, and
as they say, these days computers are so fast, no-one cares if it takes a couple of hours to install something...
Go:
Has the potential to be world-beating. Trouble is, I just don’t "get" the go notion of packages, and they break everything on pretty much every release - I have tried no less than four IUP wrappers but they were all broken by the time I got to them.
Wren:
Only thing I know of is code squirreled away on rosettacode talk pages: relies entirely on manual copy and paste, and has zero checks for updates, but at least I know where to look. However, it is the simplest thing that could possibly work, and more of a basic idea than anything like a finished product. GitHub might be a better place to store things, except for the push/pull restrictions that a public wiki does not suffer from, and rosettacode implicitly has a fair community-driven moderation aspect with several sets of eyes monitoring the recent changes that would help catch any acts of vandalism. The missing bit is automatic download, and perhaps a slightly more controlled "approved checksum" system that will "at your own risk" recent changes, and/or some kind of version history (which technically rc has). Maybe if we just simply said "same on rosettacode and PCAN === approved" that would suffice? I would also not be against adding a new step to the build process and shipping some extra files/checksums with each new release, or having some (new) means of pulling the lastest set from the official Phix repository between them.
Then again, I’m prett sure I’m overcomplicating this, maybe include file.e [from url[,date|version]] is the way to go, with url being a private site or PCAN:name, the [from] part only being used on error, and/or maybe with Phix keeping some kind of record of what it has already dealt with... Lastly, while "PCAN:" could mean the existing http://phix.x10.mx/pmwiki/pmwiki.php there should be a way for someone to setup [partial] copies of all that stuff on a different site, should they wish, and be prepared to maintain it/back-update PCAN as needed.