PackageKit¶

ID: pkcon
Home page: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/
Version requirement: >= 0.7
Platforms: 🐧 Linux (except Windows Subsystem for Linux v1, Windows Subsystem for Linux v2)
Operations: installed · outdated · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync
purl types: pkg:pkcon
CLI name: pkcon
Every call: pkcon <command> --plain
Forced environment: LC_ALL=C
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: pkcon
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/pkcon.py

PackageKit’s console client.

pkcon is an unprivileged client handing transactions to the packagekitd daemon over D-Bus, with the distro’s native backend (apt, dnf, zypp, alpm, …) doing the real work. Escalation is polkit’s job, so no operation is marked sudo: under a strict polkit policy, unattended mutations need a policy permitting them without interactive authentication.

Note

pkcon renders packages as a fused name-version.arch (repo) string and never exposes the raw name;version;arch;repo ID. Names and versions both legitimately contain dashes, so the name/version split below anchors on the first dash followed by a digit: a documented heuristic, not an exact science.

What `mpm` adds to `pkcon`¶

Through mpm, pkcon gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover pkcon alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of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 `pkcon` commands, in `mpm`¶

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

To…	With `pkcon`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`pkcon get-packages --filter installed`	`mpm --pkcon installed`
List outdated packages	`pkcon get-updates`	`mpm --pkcon outdated`
Search for a package	`pkcon search name hello`	`mpm --pkcon search hello`
Install a package	`pkcon install --noninteractive hello`	`mpm install pkg:pkcon/hello`
Upgrade one package	`pkcon update --noninteractive hello`	`mpm --pkcon upgrade hello`
Upgrade everything	`pkcon update --noninteractive`	`mpm --pkcon upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`pkcon remove --noninteractive hello`	`mpm remove pkg:pkcon/hello`

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	Notes
`installed`	✓
`outdated`	✓
`orphans`
`search`	✓	exact and extended search backfilled by `mpm`
`install`	✓
`upgrade`	✓
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓
`sync`	✓
`cleanup`
`doctor`

Selecting and configuring `pkcon`¶

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

[mpm]
pkcon = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every pkcon 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.pkcon]
timeout = 900

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

Recipes¶

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

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --pkcon dump pkcon.toml, then mpm restore pkcon.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --pkcon 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 PackageKit’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ➖ N/A (delegates to the distro backend)

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: No registry of their own
Retraction: ➖ Not applicable: these managers either delegate to whichever manager they front (pkcon, topgrade) or wrap a retired project or a discontinued platform

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:

$ pkcon --version
1.3.6

and extracted with:

r"^(?P<version>[\d.]+)$"

Reference traces¶

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

$ pkcon get-packages --filter installed --plain
Installed    gzip-1.12-1.fc38.x86_64 (koji-override-0)
Installed    hello-2.12.1-2.fc38.x86_64 (fedora)

$ pkcon get-updates --plain
Security     curl-8.0.1-2.fc38.x86_64 (updates)
Normal       hello-2.12.2-1.fc38.x86_64 (updates)

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 --pkcon installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog¶

7.2.0 (2026-07-09)
- Add PackageKit’s console client (pkcon) with installed, outdated, search, install, upgrade, remove and sync support on Linux. Requires PackageKit >=0.7.0.