pkgmanager

A single, reliable Python interface for package management on Arch Linux — official repos via pacman, and the AUR via whichever helper (yay, paru, trizen, pikaur) is installed. A lighter, AUR-helper-agnostic backend in the spirit of pamac.

Install

pip install -e .

Quick start

from pkgmanager import PackageManager

pm = PackageManager()
print(pm.helper_info(), pm.supports_aur())

for pkg in pm.search("firefox"):
    print(pkg.repository, pkg.name, pkg.version, "[installed]" if pkg.installed else "")

pm.install(["firefox"], callback=print)   # streams pacman/helper output line by line
detail = pm.info("firefox")
print(detail.depends, detail.license)

Every method is safe to call from a background thread — nothing touches UI state, and install/remove/update/refresh stream output via callback so a Tkinter/Qt window can update a log widget live instead of blocking.

pm.refresh(callback=print)          # sync package databases (-Sy)
for pkg in pm.list_upgradable():    # installed packages with a newer version
    print(pkg.name, pkg.version, "->", pkg.new_version)
for pkg in pm.list_repo_packages("extra"):  # every package in one official repo
    print(pkg.name, pkg.version)

GUI

pkgmanager_gui.pyw is a tabbed Tkinter front-end (Search/Gallery, Installed, Updates) with a Settings dialog:

• Search — text search, an All/Official/AUR source filter, and a gallery (shown until the first search) of recent searches, popular packages, and repo-browse chips for core/extra/community/multilib/aur.
• Installed — every installed package with a live name filter and a Remove button.
• Updates — list_upgradable() results with an Update All button.
• Settings — force a specific helper (or auto) and toggle --noconfirm, writing to ~/.config/pkgmanager/config.json. The chosen helper is validated by actually constructing a PackageManager before saving -- picking one that isn't installed shows an error and leaves your current, working backend untouched rather than silently breaking it.

Security model

• Every command is built and run as an argument list (subprocess.Popen(..., shell=False)) — nothing is ever concatenated into a shell string.
• search / info / list_installed run unprivileged.
• install / remove / update are elevated via pkexec in a graphical session (with DISPLAY/XAUTHORITY/WAYLAND_DISPLAY forwarded, since pkexec starts a clean environment) or sudo otherwise.
• If no AUR helper is installed, AUR operations are unavailable and supports_aur() reports False; official-repo operations keep working through plain pacman.

Structure

pkgmanager/
├── __init__.py     # public exports
├── models.py       # Package, PackageDetail
├── exceptions.py   # exception hierarchy
├── helpers.py      # HELPER_COMMANDS, detect_helper(), output parsers
├── permissions.py  # command execution + pkexec/sudo elevation
├── backend.py      # PackageManager -- the public API
└── config.py       # optional ~/.config/pkgmanager/config.json loader
tests/
├── test_helpers.py
├── test_backend.py
└── test_permissions.py

Where this deviates from the original spec

A few places where I made a judgment call or fixed something rather than transcribing literally:

1. Forcing an unmapped helper no longer silently becomes pacman. The original fallback (HELPER_COMMANDS.get(self.helper, HELPER_COMMANDS['pacman'])) meant that forcing a helper with no command mapping (e.g. pacaur, which the spec explicitly allows forcing despite excluding it from auto-detection) would silently run pacman's commands while helper_info() kept reporting the forced name and supports_aur() returned False regardless of what that helper actually supports. detect_helper() now raises HelperNotFoundError immediately for any forced name with no entry in HELPER_COMMANDS.
2. list_installed parsing accepts real pacman output, not just the spec's example. The spec's example (local/firefox 120.0.1-1) has a local/ prefix; real pacman -Q output has none — it's just firefox 120.0.1-1. The parser accepts both, defaulting to 'local' when no prefix is present.
3. Search results now flag already-installed packages. Real pacman/AUR-helper -Ss output tags installed entries with [installed]; this is now parsed into Package.installed, so a GUI search view can badge them without a separate list_installed() call.
4. AURHelperMissingError now has an actual trigger. The spec left this open ("we can't know without checking – we'll trust the user"). install() takes an opt-in known_aur=True flag for callers that already know a package is AUR-only (e.g. from a search() result's is_aur flag), raising immediately instead of leaving pacman to fail confusingly. Not added to remove()/update() — neither needs the AUR helper to operate on already-installed packages.
5. The streaming generator distinguishes early-exit from failure. If a caller stops consuming install/remove/update output partway through (rather than the process actually failing), it cleans up without raising a spurious CommandFailedError.
6. Repo-category browsing resolved with a real listing, not a stub. The follow-up spec explicitly punted on this ("pragmatic: skip category filtering for now, but keep the buttons for future extension"). Rather than ship dead buttons, list_repo_packages(repo) wraps pacman -Sl <repo> to actually list everything in an official repo. It always calls pacman directly regardless of the active AUR helper, since this is a pure sync-database read with no helper-specific behavior. There's no AUR equivalent (no bulk-listing endpoint exists), so the 'aur' category chip instead sets the source filter to AUR and re-renders the current result set client-side.
7. Settings validates before it commits. The follow-up spec's _save_settings sketch replaced self.pm and wrote the config file unconditionally. If the chosen helper isn't actually installed, that would silently leave the app with a broken backend and a config file that fails on next launch too. The dialog now constructs the new PackageManager first; on failure it shows an error and leaves the previous, working backend and config untouched.
8. Tab-switching no longer assumes the backend has finished initializing. Switching to Installed/Updates before PackageManager() detection completes would otherwise hand None to a background thread, crash it silently, and leave the UI stuck in a "busy" state (buttons disabled, spinner running) forever.

Tests

python -m unittest discover -s tests -t . -v

47 tests, all mocked (subprocess.Popen / shutil.which) — there's no live pacman or AUR helper in scope here, so nothing actually shells out during the test run. The GUI itself is checked with a headless smoke test under Xvfb during development (not shipped -- it needs tkinter and a display, neither guaranteed on a CI box) that builds the full tabbed UI, exercises tab-switching, gallery/filter logic, and the settings dialog.