alpm-conf 0.3

ArchLinux tool to manage /etc configuration files using git.

alpm-conf is an ArchLinux tool to manage /etc configuration files using git. It is implemented as a Python package.

Overview

Files installed by pacman in the /etc directory that have been changed by the root user [1] are tracked in the master branch of a git repository created by the alpm-conf create subcommand.

Using the same algorithm used by pacman to install files with a .pacnew extension [2], alpm-conf merges the changes in pacman installed files into the files on the master branch. The alpm-conf sync subcommand is then used to copy these files to the /etc directory.

alpm-conf also tracks changes in files that are created in /etc by the root user such as netctl profiles for example. The files must first be added and commited to the master branch by the alpm-conf user.

Git commands allow to:

• List the names of files created in /etc by the root user and tracked in the master branch.

• Print the changes made in the master-tmp branch before running the sync subcommand.

• Print the changes made by the last alpm-conf update subcommand.

• Print the differences between the master branch and the files in package archives currently installed by pacman.

Documentation

The documentation is hosted at Read the Docs:

• The stable documentation of the last released version.

• The latest documentation of the current GitLab development version.

To access the documentation as a pdf document one must click on the icon at the down-right corner of any page. It allows to switch between stable and latest versions and to select the corresponding pdf document.

Requirements

The ArchLinux packages required by alpm-conf are installed with the command:

# pacman -Sy git util-linux alpm-mtree python pyalpm python-zstandard

pyalpm and alpm-mtree are used to access the ArchLinux local database, util-linux provides setpriv allowing to run alpm-conf as root while running git commands as the creator of the git repository.

Installation

Install the python-alpm-conf package from the AUR.

Or install alpm-conf with pip:

$ python -m pip install alpm-conf

Footnotes

[1]

Packaged files that are modified by a package scriptlet are considered as files modified by the root user.

[2]

See the HANDLING CONFIG FILES section in the pacman man page.