Mpak is being designed from the ground up to be a kernel and architecture independent package manager for free operating systems.

Features:

• a single statically linked executable: The package manager is responsible for installing all packages, including packages like glibc, which the whole system depends on. In the event that a critical package is damaged, we should be able to use the package manager to install a replacement for the package, so other system functionality can be repaired. To install a new operating system, a user will only need a boot CD (or an already running system) and a copy of the mpak executable
• dependency tracking: Mpak will be able to find and install all the dependencies for a package. Dependency cycles will be automatically handled via a bootstrapping mechanism.
• the package tree: Package metadata will be kept in a directory tree, organized by category. An installation of an mpak based distribution will have a "system" tree. There will be support for external trees provided by other vendors. Developers may provide package trees for their own projects.
• support for building from source and binary packages: Mpak will be able to use binary packages and build packages automatically from source.
• optional feature support: Many packages have optional build-time features. Mpak will have support for these. Following autoconf's lead, we will divide them into supported packages (e.g. --with-gnome) and internal features (e.g. --enable-mmx).
• kernel and architecture indepence: mpak will have features to simplify porting to different kernels. This way, we can have a unified distribution with support for many kernels (Linux, Hurd, BSD, Darwin, etc.), with nearly identical functionality across kernels.
• package binding support: mpak will be able to bind an installation of a package to another installed package. For example, suppose you have 2 versions of the linux kernel installed, 2.4.19 and 2.4.20. You want to install the alsa-drivers package for both of these kernels. Normally, you would only be able to install one copy of alsa-drivers, but mpak will let you bind the package to the linux kernel package, so that you can have one installation of alsa-drivers for each version of the linux kernel package you have installed.
• hard and soft dependencies: mpak will have support for hard and soft dependencies. Suppose package A has a hard dependency on package B. Then, when package B is upgraded, package A will need to be rebuilt. If package A had a soft dependency on package B, then A would not need to be rebuilt.