Helm system packages

#+TITLE: Helm System Packages

• :TOC:

• [[#usage][Usage]]
  • [[#maintenance--other-operations][Maintenance & other operations]]
  • [[#privileges][Privileges]]
• [[#motivation][Motivation]]
• [[#screencasts][Screencasts]]
• [[#development][Development]]
• [[#references][References]]

• 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= (Rpm packages, Fedora etc...)
• =dpkg= (Deb packages, Debian and derived)
• =guix= (Guix manager)
• =pacman= (ArchLinux and derived)
• =portage= (Gentoo and derived)
• =xbps= (Void linux)
• 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.

NOTES: Due to the lack of developpers to maintain these packages only
the pacman and dpkg modules are maintained.

• 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-dependencies var that store the needed
  executables to use.

• An helm-system-packages-FOO-refresh function which
  will be used by the helm-system-packages-refresh function.

• A helm-system-packages-FOO variable that handle the necessary data
  to build the helm source (use helm-system-packages-manager-create
  to build it).

• References

• https://wiki.voidlinux.org/Rosetta_stone
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Rosetta
• https://github.com/jabranham/system-packages