AIPM - A Package Manager for AppImages

Scrapes appimage.github.io/apps, and creates a small download manager for these

Usage

aipm install appimage

• install a package

aipm uninstall appimage

• uninstalls all versions of package

aipm clean [appimage|all]

• remove older versions of AppImages

aipm search search_term

• search for a package

aipm import -f library.json

• import a JSON in library format

aipm export

• export to library.json in the current working dir

aipm update

• Pulls the library from JSON feed
• requires gh_login and gh_token to be set in configuration

aipm scrape[Deprecated]

• generate the library manually

• requires gh_login and gh_token to be set in configuration

aipm -h

• shows you the same thing as above

Installation

- clone repo
  
- install python dependencies
  pip install -r requirements.txt
  
- symlink aipm
  ln -s /path/to/repo/aipm.py /home/USER/bin/aipm
  
- configure application (edit aipm-sample.yaml, and move it to /home/USER/.config/aipm.yaml)
  
- import library
  aipm import -f /path/to/repo/library.json
  OR
  aipm update

Notes

• Created when I started using Fedora Silverblue

  • Immutable OS, favors applications that are installed via AppImage or Flatpak

  • It's super cool and suprisingly usable, I'd recommend looking into it.

• I found shortcomings with a similar project, spm

  • funnily enough, you can actually download spm (as an AppImage) with this tool.

• I just wanted a simple tool to install AppImages as needed

  • I also wanted to write it

• I thought it would be cool to pull a list of AppImages from an "official" resource

• Before this project, I had no clue how webscraping worked. Turns out it's really easy :E

• I chose shelve as a db because it's lightweight, and has a great context manager

  • I don't feel that a full sqlite3 db is necessary for a database so small/simple

Shortcomings

• There is no rollback (though older versions aren't deleted when new ones are installed)

• If installation through aipm isn't working, it's always worth a google search for the project instead

• AppImages and Flatpaks are better and worse than eachother in their own ways.

Known Bugs/ToDo

• There is sometimes an issue with KeyErrors on the shelve db, due to the way a json can be imported (i think?)

  • This would potentially be solved by switching to sqlite3

  • Workaround for this is to run an update command

• Implement "upgrade" command

  • It should only install a package if there's a newer version

  • ideally, if the release cycle is "continuous", it should always download the new version