Clear Linux Software Updater¶

Clear Linux’s software updater (https://github.com/clearlinux/swupd-client) manages bundles (collections of files), not individually-versioned packages: bundles carry no version of their own and follow the single whole-system OS version.

--quiet is swupd’s blessed machine channel: data flows through its print() helper while decorations (headers, “-” prefixes, “Total:” footers) flow through info(), which --quiet drops. Every query below relies on it.

Two operations are deliberately not declared:

outdated: swupd check-update reports a single whole-OS version delta through its exit code (0 when an update exists), not a per-bundle listing.
upgrade of a single bundle: bundles cannot be upgraded individually, only the whole OS via swupd update, declared as upgrade_all.
Home page: https://github.com/clearlinux/swupd-client
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/swupd.toml

Platforms¶

🐧 Linux (Clear Linux OS only)

Operations¶

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`outdated`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

Ecosystem¶

Accepted purl types: pkg:swupd

Usage¶

$ mpm --swupd installed
$ mpm --swupd search "query"
$ mpm --swupd upgrade --all
$ mpm install pkg:swupd/hello
$ mpm --dry-run --swupd upgrade --all

Every example above accepts --dry-run, which simulates the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Deselect the manager for a single run with --no-swupd, disable it from your configuration, or tune its invocation attributes with per-manager overrides.

Command line¶

CLI names, in lookup order: swupd

The version is probed by running:

$ swupd --version
swupd 7.0.0

and extracted with:

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

Privilege escalation¶

System-wide manager: mpm wraps its privileged operations in sudo out of the box. Instead of letting the tool prompt mid-run, mpm primes the credential cache up-front, with a single branded password prompt at most. Turn escalation off for rootless setups with --no-sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

Root is required for its cleanup, install, remove, upgrade_all operations.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of Clear Linux Software Updater’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ➖ N/A (Clear Linux discontinued July 2025)
Reference: Clear Linux OS

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.

Reference traces¶

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

$ swupd bundle-list --quiet
editors
os-core
os-core-update

$ swupd bundle-list --all --quiet
curl
editors
os-core