bauh

bauh (baoo), formerly known as fpakman, is a graphical interface for managing your Linux software (packages/applications). It currently supports the following formats: AppImage, Debian and Arch Linux packages (including AUR), Flatpak, Snap and Web applications.

Key features

• A management panel where you can: search, install, uninstall, upgrade, downgrade and launch your applications
• Tray mode: it launches attached to the system tray and publishes notifications when there are software updates available
• System backup: it integrates with Timeshift to provide a simple and safe backup process before applying changes to your system
• Custom themes: it's possible to customize the tool's style/appearance. More at Custom themes

Index

1. Installation
   • AppImage
   • Ubuntu 20.04 based distros (Linux Mint, PopOS, ...)
   • Arch-based distros
2. Isolated installation
3. Desktop entry / menu shortcut
4. Autostart: tray mode
5. Distribution
6. Supported types
   • AppImage
   • Arch packages/AUR
   • Debian
   • Flatpak
   • Snap
   • Native Web applications
7. General settings
   • Forbidden packaging formats
   • Custom suggestions / curated software
8. Directory structure, caching and logs
9. Custom themes
10. Tray icons
11. CLI (Command Line Interface)
12. Improving performance
13. bauh-files
14. Code structure
15. Roadmap
16. Contributing
17. Donations

Installation

AppImage

Required dependencies

• fuse: the package name may vary from distribution
• qt5dxcb-plugin (or equivalent): the package name may vary from distribution

Steps

• Download the .AppImage file attached with the latest release from https://github.com/vinifmor/bauh/releases
• Generally the desktop environment allows you to double-click the downloaded file to execute it. If that's not your case, follow the steps below from a console:
  • chmod a+x bauh-${version}-x86_64.AppImage (replace ${version} by the respective downloaded version)
  • ./bauh-${version}-x86_64.AppImage
• If you want to integrate bauh to your desktop: click on bauh's settings menu ("sandwich") and then Install bauh

Ubuntu 20.04 based distros (Linux Mint, PopOS, ...)

Required dependencies

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip python3-yaml python3-dateutil python3-pyqt5 python3-packaging python3-requests

Installing bauh

sudo pip3 install bauh

Optional dependencies (they should be installed with apt-get/apt)

• aptitude: Debian package management
• timeshift: system backup
• aria2: multi-threaded downloads
• axel: multi-threaded downloads alternative
• libappindicator3-1: tray-mode
• sqlite3, fuse: AppImage support
• flatpak: Flatpaks support
• snapd: Snaps support
• python3-lxml, python3-bs4: Web apps support
• python3-venv: isolated installation
• xdg-utils: to open URLs in the browsers (xdg-open)

Updating bauh

Method 1

sudo pip3 install bauh --upgrade

Method 2

sudo pip3 uninstall bauh
sudo pip3 install bauh

Uninstalling bauh

bauh --reset  # removes cache and configurations files from HOME
sudo pip3 uninstall bauh

Arch-based distros

Using yay

yay -S bauh

Using git

git clone  https://aur.archlinux.org/bauh.git
cd bauh
makepkg -si

Optional dependencies

• timeshift: system backup
• aria2: multi-threaded downloads
• axel: multi-threaded downloads alternative
• libappindicator-gtk2: tray-mode (GTK2 desktop environments)
• libappindicator-gtk3: tray-mode (GTK3 desktop environments)
• xdg-utils: to open URLs in the browser (xdg-open)
• sqlite, fuse2, fuse3: AppImage support
• flatpak: Flatpak support
• snapd: Snap support
• pacman: ArchLinux package management support
• python-lxml, python-beautifulsoup4: Web apps support
• python-venv: isolated installation

Uninstalling bauh

bauh --reset  # removes cache and configurations files from HOME
pacman -R bauh

Isolated installation

If you prefer an isolated installation from the system libraries, type the following commands:

python3 -m venv bauh_env       # creates an isolated environment inside the directory called "bauh_env"
bauh_env/bin/pip install bauh  # installs bauh in the isolated environment
bauh_env/bin/bauh              # launches bauh. For the tray-mode: bauh_env/bin/bauh-tray

Updating bauh

bauh_env/bin/pip install bauh --upgrade

Uninstalling bauh

bauh_env/bin/bauh --reset  # removes cache and configurations files from HOME
rm -rf bauh_env` (just remove the directory)

Desktop entry / menu shortcut

To create a shortcut for bauh on your desktop menu:

• Copy the files from bauh/desktop to ~/.local/share/applications (or /usr/share/applications for root)
• Replace the Exec field on theses files by the bauh binary path. e.g: Exec=/usr/bin/bauh (or bauh_env/bin/bauh)
• Copy logo.svg to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps as bauh.svg

Autostart: tray mode

In order to initialize bauh with the system, use your Desktop Environment settings to register it as a startup application / script (bauh-tray). Or create a file named bauh.desktop in ~/.config/autostart with the content below:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=bauh (tray)
Exec=/path/to/bauh-tray

Distribution

bauh is officially distributed through PyPi and AUR (bauh / bauh-staging)

Supported types

AppImage

• Supported sources: AppImageHub (applications with no releases published to GitHub are not available)

• All available application names can be found at apps.txt

• Only x86_64 AppImage files are available through the search mechanism at the moment

• Crashes may happen during an AppImage installation if AppImageLauncher is installed. It is recommended to uninstall it and reboot your system before trying to install an application.

• Extra actions

  • Install AppImage file: allows to install an external AppImage file
  • Upgrade file: allows to upgrade a manually installed AppImage file
  • Update database: manually synchronize the AppImage database
  • Install bauh: installs bauh if it is running as an AppImage

• Installed applications are store at ~/.local/share/bauh/appimage/installed (or /usr/local/share/bauh/installed for root)

• Desktop entries (menu shortcuts) of the installed applications are stored at ~/.local/share/applications (or /usr/share/applications for root). Name pattern: bauh_appimage_appname.desktop

• Symlinks are created at ~/.local/bin (or /usr/local/bin for root). They have the same name of the application (if the name already exists, it will be created as 'app_name-appimage'. e.g: rpcs3-appimage)

• Downloaded database files are stored at ~/.cache/bauh/appimage (or /var/cache/bauh/appimage for root) as apps.db and releases.db

• Databases are updated during the initialization process if they are considered outdated

• The configuration file is located at ~/.config/bauh/appimage.yml (or /etc/bauh/appimage.yml for root) and it allows the following customizations:

database:
  expiration: 60  # defines the period (in minutes) in which the database will be considered up to date during the initialization process. Use 0 if you always want to update it. Default: 60.
suggestions:
    expiration: 24  # defines the period (in hours) in which the suggestions stored in disc will be considered up to date. Use 0 if you always want to update them. Default: 24.

• Applications with ignored updates are defined at ~/.config/bauh/appimage/updates_ignored.txt (or /etc/bauh/appimage/updates_ignored.txt for root)
• Cached package suggestions: ~/.cache/bauh/web/suggestions.txt (or /var/cache/bauh/web/suggestions.yml for root)

Arch packages/AUR

• Only available for Arch-based systems

• It handles conflicts, missing / optional packages installations, and several providers scenarios

• rebuild-detector integration (AUR only)

• Automatically makes simple package compilation improvements (for AUR packages):

  a) if MAKEFLAGS is not set in /etc/makepkg.conf, then a copy of /etc/makepkg.conf will be generated at ~/.config/bauh/arch/makepkg.conf defining MAKEFLAGS to work with the number of your machine processors (-j${nproc}).

  b) same as previous, but related to COMPRESSXZ and COMPRESSZST definitions (if '--threads=0' is not defined)

  c) ccache will be added to BUILDENV if it is installed on the system and already not defined

  d) set the device CPUs to performance scaling governor

  Obs: For more information about them, have a look at Makepkg

• Extra actions

  • Synchronize packages database: synchronizes the database against the configured mirrors (sudo pacman -Syy)
  • Refresh mirrors: allows to define multiple mirrors locations and sort by the fastest (sudo pacman-mirrors -c country1,country2 && sudo pacman-mirrors --fasttrack 5 && sudo pacman -Syy)
  • Quick system upgrade: it executes a default pacman upgrade (pacman -Syyu --noconfirm)
  • Clean cache: it cleans the pacman cache directory (default: /var/cache/pacman/pkg)
  • Mark PKGBUILD as editable: it marks a given PKGBUILD of a package as editable (a popup with the PKGBUILD will be displayed before upgrading/downgrading this package). Action only available when the configuration property edit_aur_pkgbuild is not false.
  • Unmark PKGBUILD as editable: reverts the action described above. Action only available when the configuration property edit_aur_pkgbuild is not false.
  • Allow reinstallation check: it allows to check if a given AUR packages requires to be rebuilt
  • Ignore reinstallation check: it does not to check if a given AUR packages requires to be rebuilt
  • Check Snaps support: checks if the Snapd services are properly enabled.
  • Reinstall (AUR only): rebuilds an installed package.

• If you have AUR added as a repository on you pacman configuration, make sure to disable bauh's support (through the settings described below)

• AUR package compilation may require additional installed packages to work properly. Some of them are defined on the field optdepends of the [PKGBUILD](https: