budrich / pkg-listn Goto Github PK

When pkg-listn is executed it will compare the packages listed in "packages file" (~/.config/pkg-listn/packages) against packages that is installed locally (pacman -Qq) to see what to "mark for installation". pkg-listn will then proceed to figure out from which repositories(official or foreign) the marked packages are available from. pkg-listn will also compare the package file against a automatically generated "cache file" (~/.cache/pkg-listn/packages-cache) to determine which packages to "mark for removal".

If there is available packages marked for installation and/or removal, a terminal is opened with a summary of commands that are about to get executed, the commands are configurable in the "settings file".

Below are the default settings: (~/.config/pkg-listn/settings)

install_foreign_command = yay -S
install_command         = sudo pacman -S

remove_foreign_command  = sudo pacman -R
remove_command          = sudo pacman -R

list_local   = pacman -Qq
list_remote  = pacman -Slq
list_foreign = yay --aur -Slq

# terminal_command = kitty --name pkg-listn -e 
# terminal_command = urxvtc -name pkg-listn -e 
# terminal_command = i3term --instance pkg-listn -p spacedust-dark --
terminal_command = xterm -name pkg-listn -e 

The commands will get executed accordingly in the new terminal.

Included in the repository is also two systemd units, that when enabled:
(systemctl --user enable --now pkg-listn.path),
will automatically execute pkg-listn.bash when the package file has been modified.

You might end up in a situation where you want to remove entries from the package file, without uninstalling the packages. To do that use the command-line option --unmanage PACKAGE..., example:

$ pkg-listn --unmanage bzip2 libev pcre zlib

The above command would remove bzip2 libev pcre zlib from both the package file and the cache file.

When i tried using NixOS i found it nice to have all manually installed packages declared in a file, like this. It has happened to me many times, that I have forgot what packages i had installed, and this setup also makes it easy to recreate the same package installation on a new system.

The problem doing this is that something like this can easily get even more unmanageable if one installs and remove packages both with pkg-listn, pacman, and yay f.i. But with pkg-listn it shouldn't be a problem, if you install a package normally from the commandline with pacman -S it will not mess things up for pkg-listn and vice versa, the only drawback is that you need to add such packages sometime later to your package file, but it is not important to do so, its only to have it in the list and you can then also use pkg-listn to remove that package (simply by removing it from package file).

runtime dependencies are:

• GNU sed
• GNU bash
• a package manager (pacman, apt, zypper e.t.c)
• an AUR helper (optional)
• a terminal emulator (xterm, alacritty, gnome-terminal e.t.c)

Arch Linux users can install pkg-listn from AUR:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/pkg-listn.git
cd pkg-listn
makepkg -si
# yay -S pkg-listn     # AUR helper does whats listed above

Or clone and install from source:
(N.B. gawk and GNUmake is needed to build)

git clone https://github.com/budRich/pkg-listn.git
cd pkg-listn
make
sudo make PREFIX=/usr install # adjust PREFIX if needed

After installation this is how you create the default settings and enable the systemd units:

pkg-listn -v           # this will create the config/package file
cat ~/.config/pkg-listn/settings # review the settings
# the default configuration is setup to use pacman, yay, xterm
systemctl --user enable --now pkg-listn.path
nano ~/.config/pkg-listn/packages # add some packages