Chocolatey brought a command-driven package workflow to Windows by combining NuGet-style package metadata with PowerShell automation for installing and managing ordinary Windows software.
Hex and Mix made dependency management feel native to Elixir: projects declare packages in mix.exs, resolve through Hex, lock exact versions, and publish with the same build tool.
Conda joined cross-language binary packages with isolated environments, dependency solving and channels, making the environment—not just the individual package—a central unit of scientific software distribution.
The FreeBSD Ports Collection separated software recipes from upstream source code, letting a shared tree of Makefiles, patches and metadata automate fetching, configuring, compiling and packaging third-party applications.
CPAN turned Perl modules into a globally mirrored, searchable and installable software archive, helping establish the modern idea of a language-specific package ecosystem.