spam

SPAM - A Software PAckage Manager

Ok let's be honest, it's not really a package manager, but merely a wrapper that presents a uniform command-line interface to them. Across Linux distros and other Unixy things.

Usage & Features

👉 Easy to use every day, There's less to type due to built-in aliases. For example, to operate on the foo package:

⏵ spam -h               # note usage and cmd list

⏵ spam up               # short for `spam update; spam upgrade`
⏵ spam in foo           # or install
⏵ spam rm foo           # or uninstall
⏵ spam clean            # clean up downloads, autoremove

# Moar!
⏵ spam add foo://bar    # add repo
⏵ spam info foo         # or show
⏵ spam lsf foo          # or listfiles of pkg
⏵ spam pr /bin/foo      # or provides, what or who-owns file
⏵ spam pu foo           # or purge
⏵ spam se foo           # or search

⏵ spam up --refresh     # passes moar args to the first command

👉 Spam knows when to invoke sudo, so you rarely need to worry about it. Less to type for commands you may be running often across distros.

👉 It also can smooth over annoyances.

For example, by default it often passes --cacheonly to dnf subcommands so you don't have to wait to download the index before searching for a package. (The odds of a brand-new package being indexed in the last day or so is exceedingly small.) For apt it makes the update && dist-upgrade dance as simple as "up".

👉 It can run flatpak and/or firmware update commands as well. Whatever you'd like as part of repetitive management. Don't forget language library cleanup: pip cache purge, cargo cache -a, go cache clean, etc.

👉 It prints each command it runs, so you can learn how to do it on a package manager you may not be as familiar with. Also, if it wasn't able to do exactly what you want, it is easier to tweak the next command.

👉 Finally, if spam doesn't recognize a given sub-command, it will just pass it along unmodified. Muscle memory is not derailed in that case.

Support

Currently supports:

• apt - Linux/Debian/Ubuntu/Mint
• dnf - Linux/Fedora
• opkg - Linux/OpenWRT (though may be phased out)
• port - MacOS/MacPorts

With hopefully more to come as time allows. Probably works on the Linux Subsystem for Windows (LSW). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Install

This is the Python version. The name "spam" was taken on PyPi, so the package is called spam-util there instead.

pip install --user spam-util

There are no dependencies so faffing about with virtual-envs is unnecessary. It can then be run (as at the top of the page), though you may need to put ~/.local/bin into your path.

Perhaps you'd prefer a small binary? I've also ported this to Rust for fun.

Customization

This is done from a config.ini file in your $XDG_CONFIG_HOME folder. A default is placed there on first run, if it does not exist already:

⏵ edit ~/.config/spam/config.ini

May be useful to check it into a "dotfiles" repo.

Sections

Note: the sections and keys that are used specifically by spam are given a spam_ prefix. All others will be used to configure local commands. "Package manager" is abbreviated as PM below.

The important sections are these:

[spam_needs_sudo]
# where sub-commands that require sudo are listed
…

[spam_aliases]
# lists shortcuts, such as in for install, rm for remove
…

# sections, named to match the platform_ids from the
# /etc/os-release file, ID=… value are described below:

[fedora]
# The value of the spam_exec key sets the PM for the platform:
spam_exec = dnf
…

# sub-commands of the PM are listed below the section.
# If there are multiple commands to run; use semicolons:

clean = clean packages; autoremove


[debian]
# A "!" at the front of the command signifies it as stand-alone,
# meaning it is *not* a sub-command of the PM.
# Instead, spam will run the command as is:
…
add = !add-apt-repository

[ubuntu]
# A spam_extends allows a section to inherit from another:
spam_extends = debian

# Yet overrides may be placed into the child section as well:
foo = bar; baz

Hope you enjoy.