ChuMP: The Zen and Art of Package Management

Nicholas Shaheed; Ge Wang

ChuMP: The Zen and Art of Package Management
Image credit: Nicholas Shaheed; Ge Wang

Abstract:

ChuMP stands for “ChucK Manager of Packages”, designed to automate the process of installing, upgrading, and removing software components for the ChucK programming ecosystem. ChuMP manages libraries, tools, audio and graphics plugins in a centralized, structured, and versioned manner. This project originated out of the recent ChucK development “renaissance” alongside a growing user community, now entering its third decade. The time, as the ChucK slogan goes, is now. What began as a practical project has expanded into broader reflections on tool-building, service, and community. As we labored on what seemed like a “no-brainer” tool that everyone wanted but that no one wanted to build, questions arose: “how did we get here?”, “what is the role of service-based tool-building in our field–and what, if any, is its research value?”—in short, “should we even write a paper about a package manager?”. Meanwhile, we couldn’t help but notice that the act of creating a package manager seems to unify not only disparate software fragments, but also something of community. In other words, there may be more than meets the eye. This paper chronicles the making of a package manager and all that goes along with it. This is the story of ChuMP.