DOKK / manpages / debian 11 / porg / porg.8.en
PORG(8) System PORG(8)

porg - a source code package organizer

porg [OPTIONS] <packages>
porg -l [OPTIONS] <package> <command>
porg -q <files>

Porg is a program to aid package management when installing packages from source code.

When installing a package, porg may be used in log mode (with option -l) to wrap the installation command (e.g. "make install"), and log the created files into a text database.

Porg also provides options for printing package information, package files, removing packages or querying for the owner of files.

The special option '--' forces and end of option-scanning. This is specially useful when entering the install command in log mode.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory to short options too.

Apply to all installed packages (not with -r).
Base log directory. The logs for the installed packages are saved in this directory. Default is '/var/lib/porg', unless variable LOGDIR is set in the configuration file (type 'man porgrc' for more information).
Verbose output. -vv prints also debugging messages.
Disable expansion of package version (not with -l).
By default, porg automatically expands the package names given as arguments, by adding all the versions of the package that are registered in the porg database. For instance, if foo-1.0 and foo-2.0 are installed, the command 'porg -r foo' would remove both packages, and 'porg -r foo-1' would remove only foo-1.0.
The option -x inhibits this expansion, so that package names must match the basename and the whole version of a registered package.
Display a help message and exit.
Display version information and exit.

These options can be used to list packages or files.

Reverse order while sorting.
Print totals at the bottom of the list, when appliable. When printing total sizes, the sizes of hardlinks to installed files are counted only once.
Do not print the name of the package when listing. Useful for scripts.

Print the installed size of the package. Sizes of hardlinks to installed files are counted only once.
Print the number of installed files.
Print the installation date of the package. Double it ('-dd') to print also the hour.
Sort the list by WORD: 'name', 'size', 'files' or 'date'.

List the files installed by the package.
Print the size of each file.
Print the contents of symbolic links.
Sort the list by WORD: 'name' or 'size'.

Only one of these options may be used at once.

Print package information (like summary, author, URL...), if available.
Print the arguments (command line options and environment variables) passed to the 'configure' script when the package was built.
Query for the packages that own the files specified as arguments.

Enable log mode. If a shell command is given as argument, execute and monitor it, logging the created files; otherwise the list of files to be logged is read from the standard input. In either case, the relative paths are automatically resolved.
The list of logged files is printed to the standard output, unless any of -p or -D options is used, in which case it is assumed that a package is to be registered into the porg database.
See EXAMPLES and FILE NAMES WITH SPACES below.
Specify the name of the package to be logged. With -v, the list of logged files is also printed to the standard error stream. With -vv, porg prints detailed information about the install process. This holds for option -D too.
Use the name of the current directory as the name of the package to be logged.
Colon-separated list of paths to skip when logging the installed files. Default is '/tmp:/dev:/proc:/sys:/run', unless variable exclude is set in the configuration file (type 'man porgrc' for more information).
Shell wildcards are allowed in the PATHs. See PATH MATCHING below for more details.
Colon-separated list of paths to scan when logging the installed files. Default is '/', unless variable include is set in the configuration file (type 'man porgrc' for more information).
Shell wildcards are allowed in the PATHs. See PATH MATCHING below for more details.
By default, when installing a package porg registers only those files that exist in the filesystem right after the installation. With this option porg registers also the missing files.
-+, --append
With -p or -D, if the package is already registered, append the list of created files to its log.

Remove a package, keeping the shared files and asking for confirmation by default.
Unregister the package from the database, without removing any file.
Don't prompt for confirmation when removing or unlogging (and assume yes to all questions).
Colon-separated list of paths to skip when removing a package. Default is '' (all logged files are removed), unless variable remove_skip is set in the configuration file (type 'man porgrc' for more information).
Shell wildcards are allowed in the PATHs. See PATH MATCHING for more details.

Options -I, -E and -e accept a colon-separated list of paths, each of which may contain shell-like wildcards (*, ? and [..]). Files are matched against each of those paths, following the standard shell-like expansion, but with the following exception: If a path in the list does not contain any wildcard, and it is a directory, it matches any file within that directory.
Note that if wildcards are to be used, the whole list of paths must be enclosed in single quotes (') to protect it from being expanded by the shell.

As of version 0.3, porg accepts filenames with spaces when logging package installations. Although IMHO this should be seen as an improvement in general terms, it may cause problems when trying to feed 'porg -l' with a list of files separated by spaces. For example, the following command:


echo /bin/foo /bin/bar | porg -l

would try to log the file "/bin/foo /bin/bar" instead of logging /bin/foo and /bin/bar separately. To fix this, one may use newlines to separate file names, and pass option -e to echo so it honours escape characters, like this:

echo -e "/bin/foo\n/bin/bar" | porg -l

or either write the list of files separated by newlines into a temporary file, and run:

cat tmpfile | porg -l

To log the installation of the package 'foo-1.0', which is installed with the command 'make -C src install':


porg -lp foo-1.0 "make -C src install"

Note that in this example the quotes are required to prevent porg to consider '-C' as a command line option. The special end-of-option argument '--' may be used for the same purpose:


porg -lp foo-1.0 -- make -C src install

Use single quotes if the command already contains double quotes:

porg -lp foo-1.0 'echo "hello world" > /var/log/foo.log'

Alternatively, we can use the basename of the current directory as the name of the package to be logged, using the option -D instead of -p:


porg -lD "make install && make install.man"

If we have forgotten to install a file, it can be added to a previously created log with the option -+:


porg -lp+ foo-1.0 "install bar /bin/bar"

Note that the option -+ cannot be used to remove a file from the log. For instance, the following command:


porg -lp+ foo-1.0 "rm /bin/bar"

would not remove the file /bin/bar from the log of foo-1.0.

To avoid such behaviour it is sometimes useful to join up composed install commands into one single command and run porg once. For instance, imagine that a package installs the file /bin/bar, but we want it to be installed in /usr/bin/bar instead. If one runs this:


porg -lp foo-1.0 make install
porg -lp+ foo-1.0 "mv /bin/bar /usr/bin/bar"

Both files, /bin/bar and /usr/bin/bar remain in the log. This is usually not the desired behaviour. As a workaround one can join up both commands in one single porg run:


porg -lp foo-1.0 "make install && mv /bin/bar /usr/bin/bar"

In this case only /usr/bin/bar is logged.

To remove the package foo-3.3, keeping the files in /etc and the files ending with ".conf":


porg -r -e '/etc:*.conf' foo-3.3

You have installed the package 'boo-1.9' in prefix '/opt/boo-1.9', but you haven't logged the installation with porg. No problem! Just create a log for it thusly:


find /opt/boo-1.9 | porg -lp boo-1.9

By the way, porg internally converts all package names to lower case; 'FooBar' and 'foobar' are the same package.

Due to LD_PRELOAD limitations, porg can't follow the trace of suid programs.
For the same reason, porg does not work with programs that statically link libc.

/etc/porgrc - configuration file
/var/lib/porg - default log directory

Written by David Ricart (http://porg.sourceforge.net)

porgrc(5), porgball(8)

17 May 2016 porg 0.10