Void XBPS¶

X Binary Package System used by Void Linux.

Note

XBPS is split across several sibling binaries: xbps-query for read-only operations, xbps-install for installs, sync and upgrades, and xbps-remove for uninstalls and cache cleanup. mpm resolves the siblings from the same directory as cli_path.

Home page: https://github.com/void-linux/xbps
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/xbps.py
Version requirement: >=0.59

Platforms¶

🐧 Linux

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`outdated`	✓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:xbps

Usage¶

$ mpm --xbps installed
$ mpm --xbps search "query"
$ mpm --xbps upgrade --all
$ mpm install pkg:xbps/hello
$ mpm --dry-run --xbps 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-xbps, disable it from your configuration, or tune its invocation attributes with per-manager overrides.

Command line¶

CLI names, in lookup order: xbps-install

The version is extracted from the output of xbps-install --version with:

r"(?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.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

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

Status: ❌ None

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

$ xbps-query --list-pkgs
ii base-files-0.144_1            Void Linux base system files
ii cmark-gfm-0.29.0.gfm.13_1     CommonMark parsing and rendering library
ii curl-8.5.0_1                  Command line tool for transferring data

$ xbps-install --update --dry-run
firefox-120.0_1 update x86_64 https://repo-default.voidlinux.org/current 45MB 12MB
python3-3.11.6_2 update x86_64 https://repo-default.voidlinux.org/current 30MB 8MB