pkglist-cli

This package is a CLI for working with the pkglist format.

The CLI provides the following commands:

• exec parses a pkglist file and runs an install script for all selected packages.
• parse parses a pkglist file and returns the packages installable by the selected package manager,

Supported Package Managers

The pkglist format uses "prefixes" to determine which package manager should be used to install a package. The prefixes supported by this CLI are:

Package Manager	Prefix	Supports Multi-package Installs?
APT	apt	yes
Add APT Repository	apt-repo	no
Flatpak	flatpak	no
Snap (default install mode)	snap	no
Snap (classic install mode*)	snap-classic	no

*: Classic install mode escapes Snap's package sandbox and is required by some packages.

Usage

exec

The exec command is the most important command offered by this CLI and provides a simple way to work with pkglist files.

Run exec to install all the packages in the provided pkglist file that can be installed with the selected package managers.

# reading from a file
pkglist exec ./path/to/file.pkglist --prefix apt --prefix snap

# or from stdin
echo "apt firefox" | pkglist exec - --prefix apt

The file path (or - to read from stdin) must be provided as the first positional argument.

The --prefix argument must be provided, and can be provided multiple times.

Options

The exec command supports a few options:

• --yes: reduces the need for user interaction during installation by using the package managers non-interactive option, if one exists.
• --sudo: Executes all installs with 'sudo'.
• --dry: Executes a dry run and outputs the command that would be executed without --dry.

Notes

sudo: Some package managers require installs to be made with 'sudo', whilst others don't like it. It is up to the user to determine if --sudo should be used.

Multi-package installs: Some package managers' install commands support installing multiple packages at once. Others do not. Where a package manager supports installing multiple packages at once, a single install command will be executed. Where a package manager does not support installing multiple packages at once, a separate install command will be executed for each package.

parse

The parse command is used to get all package entries, with the selected prefix, from a pkglist:

# reading from a file
pkglist parse ./main.pkglist --prefix apt

# or from stdin
cat ./main.pkglist | pkglist parse - --prefix apt

The file path (or - to read from stdin) must be provided as the first positional argument.

The --prefix argument must be provided. Unlike with the exec command, it can only be provided once.

Options

The parse command support a few options:

• --sort: Sorts the package list alphabetically.
• --uniq: Deduplicates the returned package list.
• -1: (The numeric digit “one”.) Force output to be one entry per line.

Advanced Usage

The parse and exec commands can be piped together to enable more advanced workflows.

cat ./path/to/file.pkglist \
  | pkglist parse - --sort --uniq -1 --retain-prefix --prefix flatpak \
  | sed -e 's/flathub.org/myflathubmirror.intranet/g' \
  | pkglist exec - --prefix flatpak --dry

Documentation & Manpage

Execute pkglist --help to see the help text / manpage for this CLI.

Author & Licence

The pkglist specification and this program were both created by @jamescallumyoung.

Contributions to this project are welcome.

© 2024 by James Young and licensed under Apache-2.0.