Package managment system for Windows?

Is there, by any chance some 3rd party software package/repository solution (think APT or Portage) for Windows? It's such an ordeal to download all that crap seperately and keep it updated. A one-two click solution would be neat, at least for freeware/open source software.

Not really, since Windows doesn't operate off a package system: applications are, effectively, in most cases, independent: shared libraries--if any exist for a given application--would be written to a system folder (%windir% or %windir%\system32, for example) by the installer for a program so that it could load the library via the fact that it exists in a directory specified in the PATH variable. (The other case being that they would be stored in the program's root install directory.)

So, not really; even open source apps don't really provide a unified method.

I wasn't thinking of shared (or rather unshared) libs, rather the ability to open an interface, select the program to be installed, hit 'ok' and have it set up a minute later. And with all the binaries available at Sourceforge and other sites, such a system wouldn't even need its own servers, just download sources and silent install "recipes" so to speak (much like Portage on Gentoo does).

While I was googling around for such a program, I found this article which pretty much sums up how I feel about using Microsoft OS's these days (or set one up in this most tedious fashion).

I know what you were thinking of. (I was trying to explain, albeit badly, that programs in Windows are relatively independent of eachother, so managing them properly from a single tool is somewhat hard.)

Sadly, one does not exist. It would be possible to make; it would take some time, I imagine, to get working right, though.

(Also, that article needs to learn to use Gentoo before Vidalinux ;_;
Even a Gentoo LiveCD (with X) would be sufficient >_>)

Sadly, we are still living in a time when software companies expect that we will have all their software on disks that we bought from a store instead of conveniently downloading them off of a file server. Although I think Windows definitely has the built-in technology to do something like this. Instead of using Windows Update to simply download Security Patches, wouldn't it be nice if it had useful stuff too? I guess you could also think of Steam as a sort of package system, though it only handles Half-Life mods and other games. I think the biggest problem with getting a Package system built into Windows is that you'd have too many competing companies with software in it.