Kits

A complement to dotfile repositories for achieving reproducible and organized Arch Linux systems.

What is a kit?

A kit is functionally an Arch Linux package, but instead of packaging software, it packages configuration, scripts and installs dependencies needed for a high-level use-case. For example, my kit-desktop-environment installs a fully featured Sway desktop environment, with a login manager, bar, launcher, etc. - Not just Sway.

As packaging systems generally are the de facto standard for tracking installed files on Linux distributions, kits conceptually aim to leverage that for configuration as well.

While kits can be shared as built package artifacts or uploaded to custom repositories, they don't have to. All that is needed to build and install my kits from this repository is makepkg, see Installation.

Some nice things about kits:

• They organize installed packages and reduce the number of explicitly installed ones. Before conceptualizing kits, my system had around 150 explicitly installed packages (see yours by running pacman -Qqe). In that long list there were clear groups of packages being used to together to fulfil a use-case.

  Using the desktop environment as example again, just installing Sway does not get you very far - the kit-desktop-environment package depends on 26 packages and should work out-of-the-box as it installs all the necessary dependencies and a corresponding configuration.

• They offload and complement dotfile repositories. Migrating configuration that is only relevant for Arch Linux, that rarely changes, or that fits the package format nicely can offload large dotfile repositories.

• They offer a way to provide the "out-of-the-box" experience other distros have. While the "do it yourself" philosophy of Arch Linux is something I value and appreciate, I've also felt there is room for a more ready-made experience. The idea is that Arch Linux + kits would be able to provide just that. If you want to use Arch Linux, but you don't necessarily want to theme Sway + friends yourself, then installing an appropriate kit might be a good option.

Kits in this repository

Note that categorization is hard, so these categories/kits are very much a work in progress. My initial goal has been apply the kit-concept on my system and use-cases, not to produce something that is generic and easily reusable. I am however interested in exploring that path, long-term.

Kits installing fundamental stuff:

• kit-base-system: Installs e.g. the kernel and other fundamental stuff.

• kit-shell-environment: Installs my shell of choice, fish, along with some programs that are key to the command-line, such as Git and OpenSSH.

• kit-desktop-environment: Installs a desktop environment, Sway. Fully featured with login manager, launcher, bar, theme, and so on. Comes with the terminal emulator Alacritty.

After installing the kits above and following the post-install instructions, you should end up with a desktop environment looking like this:

Note the small number of explicitly installed packages.

Kits installing applications:

• kit-editor: Installs the editor Neovim along with some helper scripts.

• kit-mail: Installs the mail client aerc and Proton Mail Bridge to be able to connect to use Proton Mail.

Kits installing utilities:

• kit-secrets: Utilities for managing secrets, using Bitwarden as vault with some secrets synced locally to a gopass store.

• kit-arch-development: Utilities useful for Arch Linux development and packaging.

• kit-arch-user-repository: Utilities for downloading packages from the Arch Linux User Repository (AUR), specifically aurutils.

• kit-development-utilities: Generic development utilities (kind of a catch-all).

• kit-system-maintenance: Utilities for performing system maintenance.

Consistent throughout the kits is the theme Catppuccin Mocha.

Installation

Install pre-built kits with pacman

To install pre-built packages from the custom repository at https://carlsmedstad.github.io/kits/, add the following to your pacman.conf:

[kits]
Server = https://carlsmedstad.github.io/kits

And install the kits as you would any other package:

sudo pacman -Syu <kit>

Build kits from source with makepkg

To build and install a kit from source using makepkg, run:

make install-<kit>

Uninstall by running:

make uninstall-<kit>