[vnlp]

Sounds like another idea of djb took off (the slashpackage hierarchy).

[MetaDark]

I'm not sure what the slashpackage hierarchy is, but Nix & NixOS started in 2003.

[lifthrasiir]

That's https://cr.yp.to/slashpackage.html which is dated at least 2001. It's not quite the same to the Nix approach though, which also tracks all direct and transitive dependencies.