HAI can install and run Arch Linux programs from your normal user account. Even if you don't run Arch Linux at all.
HAI's design is heavily inspired by Zero Install, but it uses Arch Linux packages instead of a new package format.
HAI follows the KISS and worse-is-better philosophies. HAI is implemented as a set of specialized bash scripts, with under 500 lines of code in total, so it's not that hard to read, understand and extend.
HAI doesn't need system-wide installation. Just unpack it somewhere.
The only HAI script you need to run is hai. If you want to type hai
instead of some/long/path/to/hai, put appropriate alias in your shell config.
Some programs HAI uses aren't commonly installed:
- fakechroot: pretends some directory is actually the filesystem root.
- unionfs-fuse: merges directories (creates an union) without root privileges.
- vercmp: compares versions.
Because the point of hai is avoiding changes to the local system, you can
use bootstrap to install these programs into ~/.hai/bootstrap. It won't do
anything if you already have them. (You need FUSE and its header files to
compile unionfs-fuse, though. And obviously a compiler.)
You tell HAI what packages to install and what program to run by running the
hai command. hai doesn't really install the packages - it uses fakechroot
and unionfs-fuse to fool the program into thinking it's installed in /usr.
Try using HAI to run Inkscape or Sound Converter:
hai inkscape
hai soundconverter
The general form is
hai [--upgrade] <packages to install> -- <command to run>
(hai foo is the same as hai foo -- foo, so if the package is called the
same as the program, you don't have to write it twice.)
HAI only installs packages it considers up-to-date (unless you put an older
version in the local override directory, see the config file). However,
it doesn't refresh the package list unless you say hai --upgrade. This is
so that you can use hai even when offline.
In pacman terms, --upgrade is similar to -Sy. However,
--upgrade itself only removes the old package lists. New package lists and
packages themselves are lazily downloaded when they're needed.
You should use --upgrade as often as possible, to avoid the programs you
downloaded with HAI getting out of sync with the libraries on the base system.
HAI touches (i.e. sets modification time of) packages it uses. This allows you to, for example, find all the packages that weren't used in the last 30 days and remove them from HAI's cache:
find ~/.hai/cache/* -maxdepth 0 -mtime +30 -print0 | xargs -0 rm -r
The default configuration file is config in HAI's directory. You can put
your own configuration in ~/.hai/config, or set $HAICONFIG to another
location. It's recommended to read the config and see what can be changed.
By default, HAI stores everything in ~/.hai, but you can always change that
in the config file.
Note that out of all directories in ~/.hai, only local contains your
personal data. All the others (cache, sync etc.) can be recreated if lost.