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pkglist

#tools #pacman #inventory

Regenerate the committed inventory of every installed package.

pkglist queries pacman and writes three files in one run: the human-readable page system/installed-packages (explicitly-installed packages with descriptions, AUR/foreign packages, orphans, and the full list for grepping), plus two plain-text reinstall lists next to it. Run it whenever you want them refreshed — it answers “what was that package for?” and hands you the lists to rebuild a machine from scratch.

Run it

pkglist

That’s the whole thing. pkglist lives in ~/.local/bin (on $PATH), so just type it from anywhere. It prints a one-line summary and writes the page into the repo:

$ pkglist
wrote 1499 total, 198 explicit, 19 AUR
  doc         → ~/Dotfiles/doc/pages/system/installed-packages.md
  native list → ~/Dotfiles/doc/pages/system/installed-packages.txt (189 pkgs)
  AUR list    → ~/Dotfiles/doc/pages/system/installed-packages.aur.txt (9 pkgs)

Then commit the refreshed files:

cd ~/Dotfiles && git add 'doc/pages/system/installed-packages*' && git commit -m "Refresh package inventory"

Options

  • Write somewhere else (e.g. to inspect without touching the repo): pkglist -o /tmp/pkgs.md
  • Help: pkglist -h

Where it writes

All under ~/Dotfiles/doc/pages/system/, sharing one basename:

  • installed-packages.md — the human-readable inventory.
  • installed-packages.txt — explicit native package names, one per line.
  • installed-packages.aur.txt — explicit AUR/foreign package names.

The path is resolved from the script’s own location (it sits at .local/bin/pkglist in the repo, stowed to ~/.local/bin), so it always writes back into the repo no matter where you run it. doc/ is stow-ignored, so these live only in the repo — read the page with bdoc (fuzzy-grep) like any other, or open the files directly. Pass -o FILE.md to write the whole set elsewhere (the .txt names are derived from it).

Reinstall on another machine

The .txt files are pure package-name lists, so they pipe straight into a package manager on a fresh Arch box (after cloning the dotfiles):

# native packages from the official repos
sudo pacman -S --needed - < ~/Dotfiles/doc/pages/system/installed-packages.txt

# AUR packages (after bootstrapping an AUR helper such as yay)
yay -S --needed - < ~/Dotfiles/doc/pages/system/installed-packages.aur.txt

--needed skips anything already present, so it’s safe to re-run. Only explicitly installed packages are listed — the package manager pulls in their dependencies.

How it works

  • Counts come from pacman -Q / -Qe / -Qn / -Qm / -Qdt.
  • The description tables are parsed from pacman -Qi output (run under LC_ALL=C so the field labels stay English) — no extra tools needed.
  • Tables are column-aligned (padded with spaces) so the borders line up when read as raw text in nvim; the padding is whitespace that markdown renderers trim, so it still renders as a normal table.
  • The page is built in a temp file and moved into place atomically, so an interrupted run never leaves a half-written page.

Dependencies

pacman and awk — both always present on Arch. expac is not required.

Refresh policy

Manual on purpose: you run pkglist when you want a fresh snapshot, then commit it, so the git history doubles as a timeline of what changed on the system. There is no timer or pacman hook — nothing runs behind your back.

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