A new package manager for open source applications on Windows

My colleague Garrett Serack over at the Microsoft Open Source labs is trying to solve the deployment problem for open source software on Windows. He’s building a new package management system to that effect called CoApp on top of the WinSxS store, along with a new ecosystem and set of best practices around it. Hopefully gone will be the days where different versions of zlib step on each other, and outdated binary dependencies (sometimes with vulnerabilities) are carried over from one project to the next. The news is causing a bit of a stir around here, and I wish the best to Garrett – I rarely meet a developer with quite the passion he has in his work. There’s more over at his blog.

Update: ZDNet, Slashdot & Ars Technica have more.