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https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm-system-packages

A Helm interface to the package manager of your operating system
https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm-system-packages

dpkg emacs guix helm package pacman portage xbps

Last synced: 2 months ago
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A Helm interface to the package manager of your operating system

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README 

        
#+TITLE: Helm System Packages



This package is no more maintained and not fully working.



* Introduction



Helm System Packages is an Emacs-based interface to the package manager of your

operating system /and/ remote systems as well.



Emacs' knowledge is not required: see the [[stand-alone][stand-alone]] folder for a version targeted at

non-Emacs users.  Run the script and everything should be self-explanatory.  If

not then it's a bug, please report it.



Start ~helm-system-packages~ to list all available packages (with installed

packages as well as dependencies displayed in their own respective face).

Fuzzy-search, mark and execute the desired action over any selections of

packages:



- Install.

- Uninstall.

- Display packages details (in Org Mode!) or insert details at point.

- Find files owned by packages.

- And much more, including performing all the above over the network!



Helm System Packages provides a uniform interface over the following package

managers:



- =brew= (macOS)

- =dnf=

- =dpkg= (apt & friends)

- =guix=

- =pacman=

- =portage= (emerge & friends)

- =xbps=

- And (hopefully) more to come!  Contributions are welcome.



Some package managers come with their specific actions and even specific

Helm sources, e.g. Portage's USE flags.



* Usage



There is only one entry point: ~helm-system-packages~.



Use the persistent action to view the details of the marked packages.



Most actions can be called with a prefix argument to insert the result at point.



If started from a remote TRAMP buffer (e.g. dired, Eshell or just any remote

file), ~helm-system-packages~ automatically switches to the packages of the

remote system.  The remote package manager can be different from the local one.



** Maintenance & other operations



Helm System Packages only works over lists of packages.  It does not feature any

maintenance-related operations such as cleaning the cache or synchronizing the

database.



[[https://github.com/jabranham/system-packages][system-packages]] is an Emacs package providing Emacs with universal commands for

such operations.

It is unrelated to Helm System Packages but both work well together.



** Privileges



Transactions such as installing and removing packages are run via the `sudo`

command in Eshell.

If you'd like to cache the password for, say, an hour, you can configure Eshell

to use its own version of sudo via TRAMP:



: (require 'em-tramp)

: (setq password-cache t)

: (setq password-cache-expiry 3600)



* Motivation



Most of the package managers GUIs out there do not provide much efficiency over

their commandline counterparts.



The commandline workflow is centered around a cumbersome try-repeat loop:



1. Search for local packages.

2. Package missing?  Search for remote packages.

3. List is too long?  Pipe through a pager.

4. (Un)install the desired package by writing the searched package names again.



With Helm all those actions get factored into one.

Helm sessions can also be resumed.



* Screencasts



- Display information of multiple packages in an Org buffer, resume the search and finally install.

  #+ATTR_HTML: :width 800px

  [[./screencasts/helm-system-packages-info-and-install.gif]]

- Use Helm to find files of multiple packages across different sources.

  #+ATTR_HTML: :width 800px

  [[./screencasts/helm-system-packages-find-files.gif]]

- Use Helm to explore the graph of the (reverse) dependencies.

  #+ATTR_HTML: :width 800px

  [[./screencasts/helm-system-packages-deps.gif]]



* Development



*WARNING:* The programming interface is still under development and is prone to

change.



Each module is rather straightforward, it only needs to define the following:



- A ~helm-system-packages-FOO~ function that starts a Helm session.

- An interactive ~helm-system-packages-FOO-refresh~ function to refresh the package list either manually or after transactions.



The =helm-system-packages.el= file provides some helper functions for Helm actions.



** Roadmap

*** TODO Strengthen the interface with structures

*** TODO Factor all "info" actions?

We can add Org subsections for files, dependencies, etc.

Those sections should be folded by default.



We probably still need specific "info" actions to insert at point.

*** TODO Use bindings reflecting helm-list-elisp-packages

*** TODO [#A] Port factorization to dpkg, portage

*** TODO [#A] Port TRAMP support to brew

*** Add option to display multiline candidates for long descriptions.

*** With filtering, the displayed condidates won't include those above the candidate limit

Can we include as many filtered candidates as possible?



* References

- https://wiki.voidlinux.org/Rosetta_stone

- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Rosetta

- https://github.com/jabranham/system-packages