[colinstrickland]

Debian had binary packages with dependencies via dpkg from maybe 1994. Automatic recursive downloads, with apt (apt-get) were much later, around 1998. Rpm was launched in 1997.

It's hard to remember really, but automatic downloads would have been considered quite a misfeature by lots of user sites, in an era of intermittent, metered internet connections.

[roryirvine]

Didn't dselect in Debian deal with transitive dependencies (albeit through a tui rather than a cli) a couple of years before deity/apt came along?

As I recall, rpm could list dependencies but not automatically fetch them. Full apt-style recursive downloads weren't a thing until yum from Yellowdog (a PowerMac-specific clone of RedHat) and urpmi from Mandrake, both of which arrived in late 1999 or early 2000-ish.

RedHat eventually started using yum as well, but not until around 2002.

Certainly, in the late 90s, apt was king. Debian was struggling badly with their internal processes at the time, though, so they didn't benefit as much as they otherwise might have.

[colinstrickland]

I think you're right about rpm and yum, actually, my memory failed me. (I was always a Debian user, so didn't have as much direct RedHat experience). I remember yum being really slow when it first arrived too.

[colinstrickland]

I don't remember dselect _downloading_ dependencies, but it may have been capable of resolving the full graph - AFAIK .deb always included dependencies

[pjmlp]

Correct, however those dates are still before 2000, which was my point.

[colinstrickland]

Yes, I am agreeing with you, whilst adding some detail.