The Semantics of Package Management via Event Structures

Abstract: We propose an approach to the semantics of package management which relates it to general event structures, well-known mathematical objects used in the semantics of concurrent, nondeterministic systems. In this approach, the data of a package repository is treated as a declarative specification of a nondeterministic, concurrent program. We introduce a process calculus corresponding to this data, and investigate its operational and categorical semantics. Our hope is this lays the basis for further formal study of package management in which the weight of existing tools can be brought to bear.