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All I truly want a package manager for is to install an app in a location of my choice, make symlinks if I want them, and remove everything when I'm done with the app. Keeping track of all the user-modifiable files for each app and saving those when I "remove" would be nice too.

Yet there are 5-10 different package managers each with their own "ecosystem" of apps, and there are also a lot of apps I come across while browsing the web that say "here, download this .tgz!"; sure I'll click, but now I have a .tgz!

Does anything sort of like a "universal" package manager exist? Something with few features, just install and uninstall would be perfect as long as it will install/uninstall whatever I throw at it: .deb, .rpm, .tgz, .gem, etc.

All I want is install/uninstall through a single interface, a la App Store!

themirror
  • 6,988

1 Answers1

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The closest thing I've seen to what you're asking for is a project I found a while back on github called fpm. Stands for Effing Package Manager.

Sources:

  • gem (even autodownloaded for you)
  • python modules (autodownload for you)
  • pear (also downloads for you)
  • directories
  • rpm
  • deb
  • node packages (npm)

Targets:

  • deb
  • rpm
  • solaris
  • tar
  • directories

The app fpm is a Ruby gem so you install it like so:

$ gem install fpm

Once installed you can build a package as follows:

 $ fpm -s <source type> -t <target type> [list of sources]...
slm
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