mvp readme for packaging

tools/packaging/README.md

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+Files in this folder work with the package server and download the necessary
+versions to the local file-system.
+
+## Names
+
+- Atmosphere - the packaging server UI, available at <https://atmospherejs.com/>.
+- Troposhere - the actual package server that manages, stores and serves the
+  binaries built for different architectures. It exposes an API that can be used
+  by other front-ends (meteor tool, fastosphere, etc).
+
+  _lore_: "Troposphere is the name of atmosphere's inner-most layer!"
+
+- Warehouse - the name of the older downloaded packages layout that was used in
+  pre-0.9.0 versions of Meteor before the official package server. Warehouse
+  wasn't suitable for the new needs, so it was deprecated, but its
+  ~~soul is still around~~ code is still used for backwards-compatibility.
+- Tropohouse - the cross of "Troposphere" and "Warehouse" - a new file-system
+  layout that is used in the post-0.9.0 world. Tropohouse stores compiled
+  Isopacks on disk by package, by version, by architecture, by build.
+- "The Red Pill" - a fake pre-0.9.0 format release that upgrades the Warehouse
+  to Tropohouse: [repo](https://github.com/meteor/meteor-red-pill).
+
+  _lore_: "You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and
+  believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in
+  Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." - Morpheus to Neo,
+  Matrix.
+
+## The historical background
+
+In the pre-0.9.0 world, the world was simple. The grass was greener, the trees
+were taller. We were younger. 3rd party packages were none of our concern. All
+3rd party packages used to be distributed by a community-built tool called
+"Meteorite" or `mrt`. The packages catalog was on Atmosphere.
+
+Every package used to be versioned with the release. Individual packages didn't
+have a version at all. Springboarding worked by loading a different release of
+Meteor entirely from a Warehouse folder.
+
+In the newer world that happened with the release 0.9.0 on Aug 26 2014, MDG
+revealed the new package server that was optimized for serving tarballs, had
+versioning per package and was keeping track of builds for different
+architectures for packages with binary dependencies.
+
+With that, the new set of commands in CLI came along for searching packages and
+viewing the individual info (`meteor search bla` and `meteor show <[email protected]>`).
+
+Internally, the on-disk storage switched to Tropohouse. Atmosphere started
+serving the packaging metadata based on Troposhere's API.
+
+Meteor Tool changed the distribution from being the central piece every release
+is tied to, to a regular package with a special architecture `meteor-tool`
+(as opposed to `server` or `web.browser`).
+
+Each package has a separate versioning line (although still optionally tied to
+releases).