A package manager is a central repository to centralize and share packages, development libraries, tools, and software.

There are many public package managers, such as NuGet, npm, Maven, Bower, and Chocolatey, that provide frameworks or tools for developers in different languages and platforms.

The following screenshot is from the NuGet package manager, which publicly provides more than 150K .NET Frameworks:

One of the advantages for the developer of using this type of package manager is that they don't have to store the packages with the application sources, but can make them a reference in a configuration file, so the packages will be automatically retrieved.

In an enterprise application, things are a little different because, although developers use packages from public managers, some elements that are generated in an enterprise must remain internal.

Indeed, it is often the case that frameworks (such as NuGet or npm libraries) are developed internally and cannot be exposed publicly. Moreover, as we have seen in the CI/CD pipeline, we need to make a package for our application and store it in a package manager that will be private to the company.

That's why looking at package managers such as NuGet and npm, which can be used within an enterprise or for personal needs, is suggested.