Upstream Package Manager (upm)

Package manager manager and SDK manager, because someone had to make the 15th standard.

Requirements

A C++17 compiler, and Linux or MacOS, and access to tar with a few specs (see the tar section).

Note that MacOS will have weaker support, because I don't have access to any Mac machines. Please consider contributing to the project if you have access to a Mac and want to use upm.

General UNIXes beyond Linux and MacOS will have varying support, for the same reason MacOS doesn't have full support: I don't have those operating systems, and testing them is a slow and annoying process that I don't want to spend my time on.

Additional libraries (Linux)

• libssl-dev

Tar

• Supports --strip-components
• Supports automatic tar type detection

Package dependencies

Certain packages may have other dependencies. If such a dependency is required, and the build doesn't self-manage dependencies, it'll trigger an error if it isn't found.

How does it work?

Packages are installed to /opt/upm. Packages are then activated via symlinks in /usr/local/, similar to how a normal manual installation would work.

To make a painfully long and already well-documented story short, installing third party packages in "non-standard" formats on Linux fucking sucks. "Non-standard" in this context really just means anything that doesn't fit the format of the system-wide package manager. And yes, this includes binary tars.

upm has gone through several iterations of different package locations, only to return to the starting point: /usr/local.

There are a few reasons for this, and there are probably many more than the reasons I'm aware of. Let's assume we want a non-standard install directory. This affects:

1. Binary path: new additions require amendments to the PATH variable. This isn't too bad, but there isn't an automated way to do this. For package managers, this is fine; you add one directory, and you're good to go. If you want to install individual packages though, it isn't as convenient.
2. Include and library path: this does not apply to all packages (by a long shot), but any packages that come with a development component need a discoverable include and library path. This is now two more variables.
3. .desktop files: not all packages are terminal tools. Some need desktop entries, or other metadata additions. In the case of desktop files in particular, there's two more categories:
   1. Relative bin path: #1 has to be set beyond the shell, complicating installation
   2. Absolute bin path: The desktop file has to be modified, either by the install process or the user to function, at least if the install location is unexpected.
4. man pages: Many packages include man pages, and these also require a variable addition.

Installing upm

Using a utility script

Upm provides an installer utlity that runs all the required compile commands automatically. Also note that the script does not handle dependency install. You need to manually get the dependencies before running.

Note: it's always recommended to read through scripts before running them.

sh -c "$(wget -O- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LunarWatcher/upm/master/tools/install.sh)"

Manually

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/LunarWatcher/upm
# cd and and build the bootstrap
cd upm
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release 
make -j $(nproc)
# Have the upm bootstrap install itself
sudo ./bin/upm install upm@nightly --install_self=true

After this, you can delete the cloned repo. When upm later updates itself, the repo will be automatically re-cloned under /tmp for building.

Updating upm

When upm has been installed, upm can update itself. Simply run sudo upm upgrade upm@nightly (or another tag if you prefer), and it'll fetch itself.