Package Manager 🤖📦

Kevin's Package Manager (PKGMGR) is a multi-distro package manager and workflow orchestrator. It helps you develop, package, release and manage projects across multiple Linux-based operating systems (Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, …).

PKGMGR is implemented in Python and uses Nix (flakes) as a foundation for distribution-independent builds and tooling. On top of that it provides a rich CLI that proxies common developer tools (Git, Docker, Make, …) and glues them together into repeatable development workflows.

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Why PKGMGR? 🧠

Traditional distro package managers like apt, pacman or dnf focus on a single operating system. PKGMGR instead focuses on your repositories and development lifecycle:

• one configuration for all your repos,
• one CLI to interact with them,
• one Nix-based layer to keep tooling reproducible across distros.

You keep using your native package manager where it makes sense – PKGMGR coordinates the development and release flow around it.

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Features 🚀

Multi-distro development & packaging

• Manage many repositories at once from a single config/config.yaml.

• Drive full release pipelines across Linux distributions using:

  • Nix flakes (flake.nix)
  • PyPI style builds (pyproject.toml)
  • OS packages (PKGBUILD, Debian control/changelog, RPM spec)
  • Ansible Galaxy metadata and more.

Rich CLI for daily work

All commands are exposed via the pkgmgr CLI and are available on every distro:

• Repository management

  • clone, update, install, delete, deinstall, path, list, config

• Git proxies

  • pull, push, status, diff, add, show, checkout, reset, revert, rebase, commit, branch

• Docker & Compose orchestration

  • build, up, down, exec, ps, start, stop, restart

• Release toolchain

  • version, release, changelog, make

• Mirror & workflow helpers

  • mirror (list/diff/merge/setup), shell, terminal, code, explore

Many of these commands support --preview mode so you can inspect the underlying Git or Docker calls without executing them.

Full development workflows

PKGMGR is not just a helper around Git commands. Combined with its release and versioning features it can drive end-to-end workflows:

1. Clone and mirror repositories.
2. Run tests and builds through make or Nix.
3. Bump versions, update changelogs and tags.
4. Build distro-specific packages.
5. Keep all mirrors and working copies in sync.

The extensive E2E tests (tests/e2e/) and GitHub Actions workflows (including “virgin user” and “virgin root” Arch tests) validate these flows across different Linux environments.

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Architecture & Setup Map 🗺️

The following diagram gives a full overview of:

• PKGMGR’s package structure,
• the layered installers (OS, foundation, Python, Makefile),
• and the setup controller that decides which layer to use on a given system.

Diagram status: 12 December 2025 Always-up-to-date version: https://s.veen.world/pkgmgrmp

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Installation ⚙️

1. Get the latest stable version

For a stable setup, use the latest tagged release (the tag pointed to by latest):

git clone https://github.com/kevinveenbirkenbach/package-manager.git
cd package-manager

# Optional but recommended: checkout the latest stable tag
git fetch --tags
git checkout "$(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)"

2. Install via Make

The project ships with a Makefile that encapsulates the typical installation flow. On most systems you only need:

# Ensure make, Python and pip are installed via your distro package manager
# (e.g. pacman -S make python python-pip, apt install make python3-pip, ...)

make install

This will:

• create or reuse a Python virtual environment,
• install PKGMGR (and its Python dependencies) into that environment,
• expose the pkgmgr executable on your PATH (usually via ~/.local/bin),
• prepare Nix-based integration where available so PKGMGR can build and manage packages distribution-independently.

For development use, you can also run:

make setup

which prepares the environment and leaves you with a fully wired development workspace (including Nix, tests and scripts).

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Usage 🧰

After installation, the main entry point is:

pkgmgr --help

This prints a list of all available subcommands, for example:

• pkgmgr list --all – show all repositories in the config
• pkgmgr update --all --clone-mode https – update every repository
• pkgmgr release patch --preview – simulate a patch release
• pkgmgr version --all – show version information for all repositories
• pkgmgr mirror setup --preview --all – prepare Git mirrors (no changes in preview)
• pkgmgr make install --preview pkgmgr – preview make install for the pkgmgr repo

The help for each command is available via:

pkgmgr <command> --help

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License 📄

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

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Author 👤

Kevin Veen-Birkenbach https://www.veen.world