A fast, keyboard-driven TUI package manager written in Rust.
Search 50,000+ packages in under 50ms. Install, remove, and update without leaving your terminal.
📑 Table of Contents
TRX is a terminal UI built on top of your existing package manager. It gives you a unified, keyboard-first interface for searching, inspecting, and managing packages, whether you're on macOS with Homebrew, Arch with Pacman + AUR, or Debian/Ubuntu with APT.
No daemon required. Fully configurable via config.toml or the in-app Settings tab.
- Renderer built on
ratatuiwith deterministic layout and minimal redraw overhead - Fully non-blocking event loop using OS threads and mpsc channels (no async runtime overhead)
- Unified command model for package managers with pluggable backend architecture
- Tiered fuzzy search — five-tier scorer: exact → prefix → word-boundary → consecutive → subsequence; results ranked by relevance
- Install and remove packages without leaving the TUI (
i,xkeys) - Settings & Themes – Configure keybindings, themes (Nord, Dracula, etc.), and UI styles in-app
- Mouse Support – Full navigation and interaction via mouse
- Self-updating mechanism – Checks for new releases on startup and updates automatically
- Search result caching – Repeat queries are served instantly from an in-memory cache
- Stateless backend operations executed via system calls with structured output parsing
- Extensible design suitable for adding new package managers without modifying the core engine
curl -fsSL https://trx.pidev.tech/install.sh | shgit clone https://github.com/pie-314/trx.git
cd trx
cargo build --release
sudo cp target/release/trx /usr/local/bin/Requirements: Rust 1.70+ · Unicode/truecolor terminal
cargo install trx-clitrx| Key | Action |
|---|---|
e |
Enter search mode |
↑ / ↓ or j / k |
Navigate list |
space |
Toggle package selection |
i |
Install selected package(s) |
x |
Remove selected package(s) |
U |
System-wide upgrade |
R |
Refresh package databases |
Tab |
Switch tab (Search → Installed → Updates → Settings) |
? |
Toggle help overlay (quick keybinding reference) |
q / Esc |
Quit / exit current mode |
All keybindings are configurable in
~/.config/trx/config.toml.
src/
├── main.rs # Entry point, terminal setup
├── config.rs # Configuration and Theme management
├── updater.rs # Self-update logic
├── ui/
│ ├── app.rs # App state, event loop, channel polling
│ ├── draw.rs # UI rendering and layout
│ └── input.rs # Input mode handling
├── managers/
│ ├── mod.rs # PackageManager trait, shared parsing
│ ├── arch.rs # Parallel Pacman + AUR (RPC API) backend
│ ├── apt.rs # APT backend
│ └── brew.rs # Homebrew backend
└── fuzzy/
└── mod.rs # Substring-optimized scoring engine
pub trait PackageManager: Send + Sync {
fn name(&self) -> &str;
fn search(&self, query: &str) -> Vec<Package>;
fn get_installed(&self) -> HashSet<String>;
fn get_installed_details(&self) -> Vec<Package>;
fn get_updates(&self) -> Vec<Package>;
fn get_details(&self, pkg: &str, provider: &str) -> Option<HashMap<String, String>>;
fn install(&self, terminal: &mut DefaultTerminal, pkgs: &HashSet<String>) -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>>;
fn remove(&self, terminal: &mut DefaultTerminal, pkgs: &HashSet<String>) -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>>;
fn system_upgrade(&self, terminal: &mut DefaultTerminal) -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>>;
fn refresh_databases(&self, terminal: &mut DefaultTerminal) -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>>;
}Search, list loads, and detail fetches all run on OS threads communicating via std::sync::mpsc. The main loop polls keyboard/mouse input with a short timeout, redraws each frame, and non-blockingly drains result channels. Large searches (like Arch + AUR) are parallelized using Rayon.
| Manager | Platform | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Pacman | Arch Linux | ✅ Implemented |
| yay (AUR) | Arch Linux | ✅ Implemented |
| APT | Debian / Ubuntu | ✅ Implemented |
| Homebrew | macOS / Linux | ✅ Implemented |
| dnf / yum | Fedora / RHEL | 🔜 Planned |
| zypper | openSUSE | 🔜 Planned |
| winget / scoop | Windows | 🔜 Planned |
TRX stores its config at ~/.config/trx/config.toml (created automatically on first run).
aur_helper = "yay" # AUR helper used for AUR installs/removals (yay, paru, etc.)
theme_name = "Default" # Default, Nord, Dracula, OneDark, Gruvbox, Solarized, Custom
[settings]
search_debounce_ms = 200 # Delay (ms) before triggering search after typing stops
max_search_results = 50 # Maximum number of packages shown in search results
auto_update_check = true # Check for TRX updates on startup
auto_cleanup = false # Remove unused package caches after operations
default_tab = "Search" # Starting tab: Search, Installed, Updates, Settings
border_style = "Rounded" # Border style: Plain, Rounded, Double, Thick
spinner_type = "Dots" # Loading spinner: Dots, Bars, Pulse, Classic
enabled_managers = ["pacman", "yay", "brew", "apt"]
skipped_update_version = "" # Version string that the user chose to skip (managed automatically)
[keys]
quit = "q"
install = "i"
remove = "x"
search_edit = "e"
toggle_select = " "
tab_next = "Tab"
tab_prev = "BackTab"
system_upgrade = "U"
refresh_db = "R"
help = "?"
# The `theme` block sets the Default preset colors; `custom_theme` is used
# when theme_name = "Custom". Only one of the two is active at a time.
[theme]
border_color = "blue"
highlight_color = "yellow"
success_color = "green"
error_color = "red"
text_primary = "white"
text_secondary = "cyan"
# Colors can be named ("blue", "cyan", etc.) or hex ("#81A1C1")- Configurable keybindings via config file
- Pluggable themes and renderer settings
- Settings Tab for in-app configuration
- Mouse support
- Package update (per-package, not just system upgrade)
- Search result caching for repeated queries
- AUR search via RPC API (no yay dependency for search)
- Transaction history and rollback
- Batch mode for scripting / CI use
- Dependency graph visualizer
- Plugin system for custom backends and widgets
- Binary releases via GitHub Actions
Contributions are welcome. If you're interested in Rust, terminal UIs, or package manager internals, pick an open issue or start a discussion.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
MIT. See LICENSE for details.