Antidote¶

ID: antidote
Home page: https://antidote.sh
Version requirement: >= 2.2
Platforms: 🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS
Operations: installed · outdated · install · upgrade_all · remove
purl types: pkg:antidote
CLI name: zsh
Forced environment: NO_COLOR=1 · SHELL_SESSIONS_DISABLE=1
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: zsh-based
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/antidote.py

Antidote is a Zsh plugin manager, successor to antibody.

Antidote clones each bundle from GitHub or any other forge into $ANTIDOTE_HOME, and records it in the user’s .zsh_plugins.txt file. Packages are identified by the user/repo slug Antidote both reports and accepts, which is the id mpm keys them on.

Caution

antidote is a shell function, not a standalone binary: the antidote script shipped in the repository carries a Zsh shebang but is not executable, and Homebrew installs it as package data under share/antidote rather than linking it into bin. Every invocation is therefore wrapped in zsh -c 'source <antidote.zsh> && antidote <args>'. Zsh is the manager’s CLI, and Antidote’s own presence is established by the version probe: a host with Zsh but no Antidote fails to source and reports no version, which leaves the manager unavailable.

Note

No search: Antidote resolves bundles straight from forge URLs and indexes no registry to search.

Note

No upgrade_one: antidote update takes no bundle argument, only the --self and --bundles scope flags, so a single bundle cannot be targeted. mpm auto-skips the operation and upgrade --all still works.

Documentation: antidote.sh.

What `mpm` adds to `antidote`¶

mpm reaches across every manager at once, not antidote alone: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover antidote alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `antidote` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know antidote: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `antidote`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`zsh -c 'source ~/.antidote/antidote.zsh && antidote list --jsonl'`	`mpm --antidote installed`
List outdated packages	`zsh -c 'source ~/.antidote/antidote.zsh && antidote update --dry-run'`	`mpm --antidote outdated`
Install a package	`antidote install rupa/z`	`mpm install pkg:antidote/rupa/z`
Upgrade everything	`antidote update --bundles`	`mpm --antidote upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`antidote purge rupa/z`	`mpm remove pkg:antidote/rupa/z`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported
`installed`	✓
`outdated`	✓
`orphans`
`search`
`install`	✓
`upgrade`
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓
`sync`
`cleanup`
`doctor`

Selecting and configuring `antidote`¶

Deselect antidote for a single run with --no-antidote, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
antidote = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every antidote call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.antidote]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template antidote prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around antidote, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --antidote dump antidote.toml, then mpm restore antidote.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --antidote sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of Antidote’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: 🔜 Shipped upstream (since 2.2.0)
Mechanism: zstyle ':antidote:bundle:*' min-age <days>, whole days, no environment variable
Reference: antidote CHANGELOG

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: Upstream Git clones
Retraction: None: a plugin is cloned straight from its upstream repository, so withdrawing a bad revision is its author force-pushing, retagging or deleting it themselves. No index sits in between
Publish date: ❌ a commit or tag date is set by the author and freely rewritable

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Version probe¶

The version is probed by running:

$ zsh --version
antidote version 2.3.0 (9bb69ab)

and extracted with:

r"antidote version (?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the manager source: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know Antidote well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ zsh -c 'source ~/.antidote/antidote.zsh && antidote list --jsonl'
{"url":"https://github.com/rupa/z","repo":"rupa/z","path":"/home/kev/.cache/antidote/github.com/rupa/z","sha":"d37a763a6a30e1b32766fecc3b8ffd6127f8a0fd"}
{"url":"https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-completions","repo":"zsh-users/zsh-completions","path":"/home/kev/.cache/antidote/github.com/zsh-users/zsh-completions","sha":"729a2408fb129bcda7e8a21ae7bf349fe295b634"}

$ zsh -c 'source ~/.antidote/antidote.zsh && antidote update --dry-run'
Checking for bundle updates (dry run)...
antidote: checking for updates: rupa/z
antidote: checking for updates: zsh-users/zsh-completions
Waiting for bundle updates to complete...

Bundle rupa/z update check complete.
antidote: update available: rupa/z b82ac78 -> d37a763
d37a763 Escape calls for sed and awk in case someone aliased them (#264)
703bb54 avoid issues when `date` has been aliased
6ba0722 avoid issues when `env` has been aliased

Dry run complete. No changes were made.

antidote: skipping self-update (dry run)

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --antidote installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog¶

7.7.0.dev0 (unreleased)
- Add the Antidote Zsh plugin manager with installed, outdated, install, upgrade and remove support. Zsh is the CLI mpm executes, since Antidote ships as a sourced shell function rather than an executable.