The deadline for handing in presentations has passed – but Lightning Talks can still be submitted!

Software complexity is on the rise, but thanks to package managers, reusing software is
easier than it's ever been. In 2021, nearly every operating system, language ecosystem,
and framework has a package manager or several. Package managers take over where your
compiler left off; integrating different versions of packages and ensuring they can be
installed safely, reliably, and in a compatible configuration on your system. Where
compilers integrate large applications, package managers integrate software ecosystems.

Despite their success, package managers are something of a black art. Working on a
package manager requires a broad range of expertise--from language runtimes, to OS
deployment policy, distribution management, dependency solving and developer workflows,
package managers bridge the gap between developers and last mile software deployment.

We want to understand what brings package management communities together and what sets
them apart. What makes communities work together on a particular software ecosystem? Are
the differences mainly in the implementation language, or are there other key
distinctions to software management methodology? How can we get better interoperability
and/or cooperation among package manager teams, and what's missing/required to enable
that? Is dependency solving fundamentally the same problem across systems, or does each
package manager do it differently?

If any of these questions interest you, we want to hear from you! Packaging Con is a a
conference for developers of software package management software, as well as software
packagers and communities! Anyone is welcome to participate. Our mission is to bring
different software ecosystems together: from Python’s pip to Rust’s cargo, from
Debian apt over to Nix to conda and mamba, and from vcpkg to spack, and even
to npm, we hope to have many different approaches to package management at the
conference.

Topics

We encourage submissions in a wide range of areas related to package management,
including but not limited to:

• Deep dives on particular packaging systems.
• Package management vs dependency management
• Issues between distro-provided and developer/language-specific package managers
• Software supply chains, pipelines, and vulnerabilities
• CI for package managers and how to scale it
• Modeling software ecosystems in package managers
• Modeling compatibility (semver, API/ABI analysis, etc.)
• Versioning
• Software release methodology: rolling / LTS / others
• Monorepos and package management
• Reproducibility in package managers
• Functional package management, how it relates to other systems
• Reliability/robustness of software ecosystems
• Dependency solving: modeling, methods, and scalability

This list is by no means exhaustive -- any topic related to package management is
welcome to attend.

Code of Conduct

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, pledge to make
participation in Packaging Con a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of
age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of
experience, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and
orientation.

By participating in the conference you agree to abide to the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct.

This Call for Papers closed on 2021-11-11 21:00 (UTC).