Alien Packaging Subsystem

Alien Packages

GoboLinux has a concept of “Alien” packages. These are programs that are usually packaged via external, distro-independant package managers. Common examples are: pip (Python), npm (Javascript), cargo (Rust), LuaRocks (Lua), RubyGems (Ruby), CPAN (Perl.

GoboLinux currently supports the following backends:

  • LuaRocks
  • PIP3
  • RubyGems
  • CPAN

How to install and update Alien packages

In order to install a foreign package we can use the following syntax:

sudo Alien --install <package_manager>:<package_name>

For example in order to install or update meson you would type:

sudo Alien --install pip3:meson

Limitations

Sadly, at the moment we are lacking support for some popular package managers like npm or cargo.

If you want to contribute support for these package manager look here: https://github.com/gobolinux/AlienVFS/tree/master/gobo/alienvfs