pmmux - package manager multiplexer

This small and very portable utility solves a part of bootstrapping a system: installing other software using the relevant package manager. Which package manager that is, is determined at runtime. That is the power of pmmux. Let's see why this is useful with an example:

pmmux -1 choco+pip apt+python3-pip brew+python pacman+python-pip

As you can probably guess, this installs pip. The added value is in the fact that this command works on a few Linux distributions, macOS, and even Windows! Read on if you want to learn more.

Is pmmux for me?

pmmux is for people who deal with different distributions and operating systems, and want some consistency/ease in installing a set of packages from different sources. This might include team leads who want to provide a script to install the system dependencies of a software project to their colleagues without resorting to heavyweight technologies like Docker.

How does it work?

pmmux is given a list of package managers and their arguments like the example above. This first package manager actually present on the system it is run on is used to install the package name given in that argument.

Where does it work?

UNIX-like systems and Windows. In other words: every modern operating system such as macOS, Windows, Linux etc. It works fine in the WSL, transparently calling choco.exe if it is available.

Installation

Windows (PowerShell)

irm 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Eforah-oss/pmmux/master/pmmux.ps1' `
    | % {$_ - replace "pmmux @args$", "pmmux -1 pmmux+pmmux"} | iex

macOS/Linux etc.

git clone https://github.com/Eforah-oss/pmmux
cd pmmux
sudo make install