xbpskeeper

Declarative package management for xbps. Useful with Void Linux and other xbps-based distros.

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 ruby-pry, that will pull in ruby, and mark it as automatically installed. Later if I decide I don't want ruby-pry, an xbps-remove -o 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 xbpskeeper somewhere in your PATH, for example ~/bin or /usr/local/bin.
• Create a directory ~/.config/xbpskeeper 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 xbpskeeper candidates
• Once you think you're satisfied, run xbpskeeper diff. It will tell you what it thinks needs removing or installing.
  • Then, run xbpskeeper 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 xbpskeeper sync

An example .keep file might look like:

# Browsers
firefox
chromium
epiphany # aka "Gnome Web"

ripgrep tmux git # CLI tools

Tips

• Put your xbpskeeper 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 xbpskeeper 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 xbpskeeper dir to a new system, to setup packages just like on the old one.
• Feel free to install some packages temporarily with xbps-install, without using xbpskeeper, as long as it's safe for them to be autoremoved later.

Detailed usage

Common commands

xbpskeeper sync

Install and remove packages to match the keeper files

xbpskeeper diff

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

xbpskeeper 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.

xbpskeeper 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 xbps package reasons, according to the keepers

Why not use...?

xbps-pkgdb

xbps already has a built-in concept of marking package installation reasons as "manual" or "auto". You can use the xbps-pkgdb command to manipulate this, and xbps-remove -o will cleanup packages that are no longer needed.

But:

• xbps-pkgdb 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, xbps 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 xbpskeeper.

Caveats

• Your .keep files are not a full description of the packages installed on your system. xbps dependencies can be optional, or can have multiple packages that satisfy a given dependency, and there's no way for xbpskeeper to understand your intentions. Typically it works, but if you need to have absolutely identical packages on different systems, use a different solution.

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
• dnf5keeper for Fedora's DNF5