dnf5keeper

Declarative package management for DNF5. Useful with Fedora and other related distros.

Note that only version 41+ of Fedora uses DNF version 5, and this script is not compatible with DNF 4 or lower.

Why use this?

It can be hard to remember why I've installed all the packages on my system. This can cause various issues:

• My system is full of crufty packages that I don't really need. For example, if I temporarily install some packages to compile something, I'll probably never remove them later.
• It's easy to accidentally remove important packages. For example, if I install rubygem-pry, that will pull in ruby, and mark it as automatically installed. Later if I decide I don't want rubygem-pry, a dnf autoremove will get rid of ruby, even if I'm using it for lots of other things!
• It's hard to setup my packages on a new system. I can't just look at my previous system, cuz I have no idea what all its packages were for.
• I can't tell what I used to have in the past. If I was previously developing on some project, I probably installed a bunch of packages, and maybe removed them later. If I want to get back to that project, I doubt I can remember exactly which packages I used.

How to use this

• Make sure you have our only dependency installed, the package ruby.
• Copy dnf5keeper somewhere in your PATH, for example ~/bin or /usr/local/bin.
• Create a directory ~/.config/dnf5keeper to declare your packages
  • Inside that directory, create one or more files with the extension .keep.
  • Each file should contain a list of packages you want to keep installed. Comments starting with '#' are allowed, as are blank lines.
  • You can get a reasonable initial list of packages with dnf5keeper candidates
• Once you think you're satisfied, run dnf5keeper diff. It will tell you what it thinks needs removing or installing.
  • Then, run dnf5keeper sync to do the installation or removal! It will take care of installing and removing dependencies.
• Later, when you want to make changes, just edit your .keep files, then run dnf5keeper sync

An example .keep file might look like:

# Browsers
firefox
chromium
epiphany-browser # aka "Gnome Web"

ripgrep tmux git # CLI tools

Tips

• Put your dnf5keeper directory in git! Then you'll have a history of your changes.
• Use comments to remind yourself why you wanted a package, so you know whether you still need it.
• Need a single package, and too lazy to open your editor? Just run dnf5keeper add foo "my reason" mypackage, and it will automatically put it in foo.keep and install it. Then you can organize it properly later, when you have more time.
• Put packages required for a project in a separate .keep file, so you remember that they're related. Now they're easy to remove all at once!
  • Similarly, you can put related packages nearby each other, so they're easy to block-comment and get rid of.
• There's no harm in listing a package twice! Eg: if it's needed for multiple projects, you can list it in multiple .keep files.
• Copy your whole dnf5keeper dir to a new system, to setup packages just like on the old one.
• Feel free to install some packages temporarily with dnf, without using dnf5keeper, as long as it's safe for them to be autoremoved later.

Detailed usage

Common commands

dnf5keeper sync

Install and remove packages to match the keeper files

dnf5keeper diff

Print the packages that would be installed or removed by a sync

dnf5keeper add BASENAME REASON PACKAGE [PACKAGE...]

Adds packages to BASENAME.keep with a comment, and installs them. Good for small changes when you're too busy to open an editor.

dnf5keeper candidates

List packages not listed in .keep, and with no dependencies. Good for finding candidates to add to .keep files, especially when starting out.

Other commands

keepers: List packages in .keep files missing: List packages to be installed unneeded: List packages to be removed install: Install missing packages (but don't remove anything) remove: Remove unneeded packages (but don't install anything) update-reasons: Unconditionally update DNF's package reasons, according to the keepers external - Show packages whose reason is "external", ie: not installed via dnf. You should probably use dnf mark to clarify what these are for.

Why not use...?

dnf mark

DNF already has a built-in concept of marking package installation reasons as "user" or "depedency". You can use the dnf mark command to manipulate this, and dnf autoremove will cleanup packages that are longer needed.

But:

• dnf mark has no user-visible keeper file at all!
  • You can't put your keepers in git.
  • You can't add comments or split things into multiple files.
• By default, dnf assumes that when you install a package, it's desired as a keeper. This makes it too easy to install packages without remembering why.

pacdef

pacdef is a multi-backend declarative package management system. You can manage packages across a variety of different distros and language-specific package managers, like cargo or pip. It supports a hierarchical system of package grouping, where entire groups of packages can be imported or removed from your system.

But:

• There are serious bugs that make pacdef very difficult to compile.
• It's much more complex than I need.
• It doesn't support certain use cases I like, such as commenting out a whole file when I'm done with a project.

ansible, chef, puppet

These are great tools to set up systems. But they're designed for production systems that should mostly stay unchanged. End-user systems constantly have packages being installed and removed, and are a better fit for something like dnf5keeper.

Caveats

• dnf5keeper doesn't do anything with "group" dependencies. Many packages are dependents of "groups", and groups may be dependents of "environments". These remain managed by only dnf. Dnf5keeper won't remove packages that are depended on by groups, but also won't encourage you to list them.
• dnf5keeper will overwrite your DNF reasons file. I think of this as a feature, since it makes it easier to use all these tools together. But you might not! Dnf5keeper does keep backups in /usr/lib/sysimage/libdnf5/packages.toml.bak
• Your .keep files are not a full description of the packages installed on your system. DNF dependencies can be optional, or can have multiple packages that satisfy a given dependency, and there's no way for dnf5keeper to understand your intentions. Typically it works, but if you need to have absolutely identical packages on different systems, use a different solution .
• dnf5keeper may consider optional dependencies as important enough to keep the dependent package installed. I'm not sure whether there's a way to configure this.

Inspiration

• aptkeeper, my nearly equivalent system for apt-based distros.

• debfoster for apt-based distros (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)

• pacdef for Arch-based distros

• pacmanfile, also for Arch-based distros

• Homebrew's bundle capabilities.

• The set -A and autoremove subcommands of FreeBSD's pkg

• The selected set of Gentoo's Portage, along with the --select, --deselect and --depclean options.

• The mark and autoremove subcommands of Fedora's dnf

• Of course, the declarative systems of Nix and Guix

Also some previous attempts of mine at this sort of thing:

• brewfoster for Homebrew
• rpmkeeper and yumkeeper for yum-based distros
• zyppkeeper for OpenSUSE's zypper.