🎀 bow

Put a bow on your package management.

🚀 The Vision

I could never remember the different commands for package managers when I switched between Arch, Debian, Fedora, and macOS. So I made bow, a small cross-platform CLI front-end that abstracts the friction of distro-hopping.

Inspired by nala on Debian, bow doesn't just wrap package managers; it makes them beautiful. It is built in Rust, features rich terminal UIs, and follows the XDG Base Directory Specification for configuration and state. (This is my first Rust project!)

🛠 Features

• Unified Syntax: Memorize five letters: s, i, r, u, c.
• Beautiful UX: Rich tables (comfy-table), vibrant colors (owo-colors), and clean error reporting (miette).
• AUR Integration: Seamlessly bridges the gap between official repos and the AUR (auto-detects yay and paru).
• XDG Native: No clutter. Strictly adheres to system standards.
• Space Optimization: Aggressive cleanup routines to keep your disk lean.

📥 Installation

Currently, bow must be built from source using Cargo. Ensure you have Rust installed on your system, then clone the repository and install:

git clone https://github.com/john-dennehy/bow.git
cd bow
cargo install --path .

This will compile the optimized release binary and place it in your ~/.cargo/bin directory (ensure this is added to your system's $PATH).

(Pre-compiled binaries and an official AUR PKGBUILD are planned for the future!)

📦 Commands

Search

bow s <package>

Searches for a package in the official repositories and the AUR.

Install

bow i <package>

Installs a package from the official repositories or the AUR.

Uninstall

bow r <package>

Uninstalls a package from the system.

Update

bow u

Updates the system.

Clean

bow c

Cleans the system of orphan packages.

🔮 Future Plans

• Automatic AUR helper detection (yay, paru).
• Add support for Debian/Ubuntu (apt) and Fedora (dnf).
• Add support for macOS (brew).