SliTaz Doc

Packages

SliTaz images ship with a small set of software on purpose: you add what you need. About 6000 packages are available for i486 and 5700 for x86_64, from the official mirror. Browse them online at pkgs.slitaz.org.

The tools

spk is the package manager of SliTaz 5.1. It is a set of small commands: spk-search, spk-ls and spk run as a normal user; spk-add, spk-rm, spk-up and spk-mirror need root. spk-gui (GTK3) and spk-tui (text mode) are front-ends to the same commands. The classic tazpkg is still installed and shares the same package database, so both can be used on the same system.

Graphical package manager

On the desktop, open Spk Package Manager from the Dash or the welcome window. Spk-gui asks for the root password, then lets you search, install, remove and upgrade packages. Started by a normal user, it opens read-only with a button to relaunch it as administrator.

Search

$ spk-search editor
$ spk-search --name gimp
$ spk-search --file /usr/bin/convert

Without option, the pattern is searched in package names and descriptions. --file tells which package provides a file, --rdeps which packages depend on a package. Search is instant: the whole mirror is searched in a fraction of a second.

Install and remove

# spk-add geany
# spk-add mtpaint xarchiver
# spk-rm geany

spk-add downloads the package and its dependencies from the mirror and installs them; it also installs a local package file: spk-add ./package-1.0-x86_64.tazpkg. spk-rm --autoremove also removes the dependencies nothing else uses. Add --dry-run to any of them to see what would happen.

Upgrade the system

# spk-up

spk-up refreshes the package lists, shows the available upgrades and asks for confirmation. spk-up --check only reports them, spk-up --list only refreshes the lists. Before upgrading, spk-up takes a snapshot and keeps the replaced packages in /var/cache/spk/previous/, so that reprise can undo a bad upgrade, even without network. Installs are atomic: an interrupted install does not leave a half-installed package.

List and inspect

$ spk-ls                 # installed packages
$ spk-ls --count
$ spk-ls nano            # files installed by nano
$ spk nano               # status, version and description
$ spk info               # mirror, cache and database statistics
$ spk activity           # last installs, upgrades and removals
$ spk history nano       # what happened to one package
# spk-doctor             # check the package database, --fix repairs it

Block a package

A blocked package is never upgraded, useful to keep a known good version:

# spk firefox-official --block
# spk firefox-official --unblock
$ spk-ls --blocked

Mirrors and extra repositories

The mirror is set in /var/lib/tazpkg/mirror. The default ones are:

• i486: http://mirror.slitaz.org/i486/cooking/packages/
• x86_64: https://mirror.slitaz.org/x86_64/cooking/packages/

Change it with trame mirror set <url>. Extra repositories, such as your own packages, are added with spk-mirror:

# spk-mirror https://example.org/packages/
# spk-mirror /home/slitaz/packages --gendb

Downloaded packages are kept in /var/cache/tazpkg; spk clean empties it.

Tazpkg

Tazpkg does the same jobs with one command and sub-commands; it is also the tool available on SliTaz Base i486:

Use one tool to block packages: spk and tazpkg keep separate block lists.

Renamed and replaced packages

Package format

A package is a .tazpkg file named name-version.tazpkg on i486, name-version-x86_64.tazpkg on x86_64 and name-version-any.tazpkg for architecture-independent packages on the x86_64 mirror. It is a cpio archive holding the receipt (the recipe it was built from), the file list, the checksums and the compressed files. Installed packages are recorded in /var/lib/tazpkg/installed/. Packages are built with cookutils, see Build your own.