Sounds like https://0install.net which has been around for a while. Personally I prefer to avoid 'installing' anything: if something's written in Java, its launcher should reference some specific java binary; if something's written in Python, it should reference some specific python3 binary; etc. For example, my job is mostly writing Scala and building it with Maven; yet I have neither installed system-wide.... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

It seems more like a package manager. https://0install.net/. Source: over 1 year ago

The article mentions Snap, AppImage and FlatPak, but there is also a much older system called 0install (zero install) that was started in 2003 or so [1]. I wonder why that never took off. [1] https://zero-install.sourceforge.net/roadmap.html (note this is the old website; the new website is https://0install.net - looks like it's still getting releases in October this year). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

That's true, future app distributions should utilize web 3.0, e.g. decentralization. There is 0install ( https://0install.net/ ), for example, it is better. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago

Of course, tmux isn't the only software that you might want the latest release for. Happily, there's a lot of AppImages available. Source: over 2 years ago

And this is the backend for AppImageHub, I think: Https://appimage.github.io/apps/ (I'm a bit confused regarding who runs what...). Source: over 2 years ago

Sorry to suggest something in response to a rant, but is nearly a container okay, i.e., an AppImage? https://appimage.github.io/apps/, https://apprepo.de/ or https://www.appimagehub.com/ may have something. Alas often AppImages don't want the bulk of including glibc so they might fail anyway. Source: over 2 years ago