archon

One package-management interface for Linux, with native distro adapters and sandboxed AUR builds on Arch.

On Arch, archon resolves dependencies across the official repos and AUR, builds AUR packages in a bubblewrap sandbox, and installs the resulting archives through pacman. Optional eBPF monitoring is available with --report. Other supported distro families delegate installation to their native package manager. Version 0.2.1 is experimental; unresolved security findings and verification limits are documented in AUDIT.md.

Features

• Unified dependency resolution (Arch): official repos + AUR in one graph, with provides=() virtual packages, version constraints, conflict detection, bounded backtracking, check dependencies, and dependency-first AUR builds grouped by PackageBase.
• Sandboxed AUR builds: two-stage makepkg under bubblewrap — network allowed only while fetching sources, fully unshared during the build.
• eBPF build monitoring (--report): policy checks for captured exec, file-open and connection events. Flagged and zero-event reports block installation. Live coverage and root-path safety remain unverified.
• Smart search: results ranked by AUR popularity (what users actually install), exact matches pinned first — plus automatic "did you mean" suggestions when an exact name isn't found.
• Cross-distro: detects the host via /etc/os-release and delegates to apt, dnf, zypper, apk, nix-env, xbps, or emerge.
• Plans and confirmation: inspect a request with --dry-run before installation. Cross-distro end-to-end behavior remains unverified.

Installation

cargo install archon-cli

This installs a binary named archon into ~/.cargo/bin (make sure it's on your PATH). The package is archon-cli because the name archon was taken on crates.io — the command you type is still archon.

To use sudo archon ... --report (root is required to load the eBPF monitor), symlink the binary onto root's secure_path:

sudo ln -sf "$(which archon)" /usr/local/bin/archon

Requirements: Rust stable (that's all — the compiled eBPF monitor ships embedded in the binary). On Arch, the sandbox additionally needs bubblewrap (sudo pacman -S bubblewrap) and cgroups v2 (the default on any current install). Other distros need nothing beyond their own package manager.

From source:

git clone https://github.com/ravindran-dev/archon
cd archon
cargo install --path crates/archon --locked

Quick start

archon search chrome              # ranked search: official repos + AUR
archon plan firefox               # show the full install plan, change nothing
archon install firefox            # resolve, confirm, install
archon install google-chrome      # sandbox-build AUR package, then install via pacman
sudo archon install spotify --report   # build under eBPF monitoring, install only if clean
archon remove firefox             # pre-checked removal via pacman -Rs
archon build ./path/to/pkgbuild   # sandbox-build a local PKGBUILD (never installs)
archon capabilities              # show operations implemented for this host
archon upgrade --dry-run         # preview the native upgrade command
archon info firefox              # native package details
archon list                      # installed packages
# Fedora/openSUSE:
archon list --json               # structured RPM inventory, including epoch/arch
archon repos                     # native repository configuration
# Fedora:
archon check                     # native dependency consistency check

Useful flags: --dry-run (plan only, no changes), --yes (skip archon's prompt), --all (search: show every match instead of the top 15).

Supported distros

Family	Detected via	Delegates to
Arch (Manjaro, EndeavourOS, …)	ID/ID_LIKE=arch	resolver + AUR + sandbox; optional eBPF monitor
Debian / Ubuntu (Mint, Pop!_OS, …)	debian/ubuntu	apt
Fedora / RHEL (Rocky, Alma, …)	fedora/rhel	dnf
openSUSE / SLE	suse/opensuse	zypper
Alpine	alpine	apk
NixOS	nixos	nix-env (no sudo — installs to your user profile)
Void	void	xbps
Gentoo	gentoo	emerge

Off Arch, the native tool owns dependency resolution and its own confirmation — archon provides detection and one consistent CLI. --yes maps to each tool's own assume-yes flag; --report isn't available off Arch (it needs the PKGBUILD build-recipe model) and says so instead of silently ignoring the flag. Anything unlisted gets a clear error naming what was detected. Adding a backend is a small trait impl — see docs/DESIGN.md.

Native lifecycle commands now include upgrade, refresh, info, list, reinstall, repos, check, history, and provides, with availability declared by each adapter. Fedora implements all nine plus structured RPM inventory. Arch rejects standalone refresh; its upgrade uses pacman -Syu and currently upgrades official packages only. Nix operations apply to user profiles/channels. Command previews do not resolve native transactions. Fedora rpm-ostree mutations require a dedicated adapter and are rejected by the DNF adapter. See the capability matrix and development rules for exact support and the roadmap toward deeper integration across families.

Fedora also has an opt-in prepared transaction path using python3-libdnf5: archon plan --native firefox saves a dependency-resolved plan; review it with archon transaction show ID and execute it with archon transaction apply ID. It includes versions, dependencies, replacements, removals and archive sizes, refuses stale plans, and persists recovery checkpoints. Transaction commands support --json; interrupted commits require native inspection before retry. The bridge and supplied VM harness still require successful real Fedora runs. See native transactions and release validation.

Security monitoring in action

The repo ships a deliberately malicious demo package. Building it under the monitor:

sudo archon build ./demo/archon-demo-evil --report

Build report for archon-demo-evil
  3022 syscall event(s) observed
  9 event(s) FLAGGED:
    [!] wrote outside $srcdir/$pkgdir: /var/tmp/archon-evil-marker
    [!] wrote outside $srcdir/$pkgdir: /tmp/archon-evil-marker
    [!] connected to undeclared address: 1.1.1.1:80

==> build FLAGGED — treat the output as untrusted.

The example above is a pre-audit demonstration, not a result reproduced by this audit. Live benign/malicious build behavior remains UNVERIFIED. Details in docs/DESIGN.md.

Development

cargo build --workspace   # stable toolchain only
cargo test --workspace    # HTTP mocks need localhost sockets; sandbox tests need bwrap support

The workspace is nine crates (types, repo parser, AUR client, resolver, sandbox, eBPF monitor + common ABI, distro backends, CLI). Architecture, crate map, testing philosophy, the crates.io publishing procedure, and the design notes behind every non-obvious decision — including the bugs only live testing could find — are in docs/DESIGN.md.

Known Limitations

Archon 0.2.1 remains experimental. See AUDIT.md for failed-first regressions, raw verification logs, and unresolved security findings. The empty-database fixture and all-target clippy failures reported on 2026-10-20 are fixed, and the full locked workspace suite and strict all-target clippy have since passed on the user's Arch environment. The six-distro container matrix, live privileged AUR transaction/signature enforcement, and eBPF monitoring still need successful end-to-end runs before production use.

• Arch resolution now backtracks across alternatives and providers, including late conflicts. Search is bounded (100,000 steps by default); exhaustion returns an explicit error. This does not guarantee every solvable request completes within the limit.
• AUR check dependencies are included, and selected split outputs sharing a PackageBase build together. Dynamic PKGBUILD metadata, VCS freshness, stale clones, and changing upstream dependencies still need live coverage.
• Non-Arch installs delegate to native package managers. The experimental AptLists parser/resolver is not used for these installs; Debian multiarch qualifiers, Breaks, and Replaces are not fully modeled in that API.
• Local archon build requires the Arch makepkg toolchain. A managed Arch container backend and a clearer non-Arch preflight remain unresolved.
• Ordinary AUR installs build in bwrap and then install through native pacman. Before the first AUR install, run archon setup-helper once; this requests administrator authorization to copy the companion archon-install-helper to /usr/local/libexec as root-owned mode 0755. It does not set the helper setuid. The receiver accepts only bounded package/signature bytes on stdin, stages them in root-private storage, and passes staged archives to pacman without changing /etc/pacman.conf; pacman remains responsible for native signature verification and transaction confirmation. LocalFileSigLevel requirements are supported when valid adjacent signatures are provided. eBPF is optional through --report. Zero-event and flagged reports block installation. Live tracepoint compatibility, event loss, malicious builds, and privileged installation are UNVERIFIED in this audit environment.
• --report fails closed on non-Arch systems because their native package managers do not use Archon’s AUR build/monitor pipeline.
• Install/remove reject empty package names and names beginning with - so CLI input cannot be consumed as a native package-manager option.
• The install helper gives pacman the controlling terminal for its transaction prompt; package bytes remain on the helper protocol stream. The root-owned helper must be refreshed with archon setup-helper for this fix to take effect.
• PGP imports now execute inside bwrap as the build user, with strict fingerprints and GPG options disabled. The parent never modifies the build keyring. Real unprivileged bwrap/GPG preparation is tested; privileged user switching and successful signature verification still need end-to-end checks.
• Archive identity is checked with pacman; ambiguous outputs fail explicitly. The archive and adjacent signature are frozen before transfer, then staged privately by the root-owned receiver. Hermetic protocol tests pass; the real privileged receiver and native signature enforcement remain UNVERIFIED here. Custom pacman.conf repository priority, cache concurrency, and all package relationship combinations have not been exhaustively audited.
• ALPM comparison matched native vercmp for 900 tested pairs. Native dpkg parity remains UNVERIFIED here because dpkg is absent. Cross-backend comparisons now return typed errors instead of panicking.
• Build, strict all-target clippy, formatting, and the full locked workspace suite passed in the user's Arch environment (229 tests, 0 failures) before the latest fail-closed report and argument-validation changes. Their focused regressions and strict clippy pass; rerun the full suite before release. The agent sandbox cannot bind localhost sockets for HTTP mock tests. A real benign sandbox build reaches Fetch but Build fails because the environment denies NETLINK_ROUTE sockets; network isolation remains enabled. The six-distro Docker matrix is supplied but UNVERIFIED because Docker is absent. Run scripts/matrix.sh and optionally scripts/matrix.sh --install on a Docker host; transactions occur only inside disposable containers.

License

MIT