paketihaldur

Paketihaldur is the Estonian term for a software package manager, a component that handles installation, upgrading, configuration, and removal of software packages on a computer system. It coordinates with software repositories, resolves dependencies, and ensures consistency of the installed software set. It supports operations such as searching for packages, downloading packages, verifying cryptographic signatures, and applying updates in an atomic manner, often with rollback support.

In practice, the term is used across Estonian-language contexts to refer to any package management system, regardless of the underlying package format. Common examples in various ecosystems include apt and dpkg on Debian-based systems, dnf or rpm on Red Hat-based systems, and pacman on Arch-based systems, among others.

A package manager typically uses a package database to track installed versions and available updates, maintains a local cache, and enforces security by verifying repository signatures and package checksums.

Design considerations include dependency resolution complexity, versioning policies, handling of multiple repositories, and user permissions. Package managers may operate in user mode or require elevated privileges; some provide graphical interfaces while others are command-line oriented.

In Estonia and other Estonian-speaking environments, Paketihaldur is also used as a general term in documentation and tutorials to describe package management tasks, rather than to name a single software project.