Aether

Aether is a modern, interactive Terminal User Interface (TUI) and command-line wrapper for the Debian/Ubuntu apt package manager, written in Go. It brings a pacman-like syntax and an intuitive graphical console to apt.

Features

• Interactive TUI: Browse, search, install, and remove packages using a keyboard-driven visual interface.
• Smart Privilege Escalation: Run Aether as a normal user. It will only prompt for sudo when an operation actually requires root privileges.
• Familiar CLI Flags: Uses intuitive flags originally popularized by Arch Linux's pacman.
• Live Progress Support: High-quality visual progress bars while fetching and installing packages.
• Source Management: View and modify your APT sources list (.list and .sources) directly from the TUI.
• Safe Execution: Gracefully handles APT front-end locks and dpkg dependencies.

Installation

Ensure you have a recent version of Go installed.

Quick Install (One-liner)

git clone https://github.com/devansharora18/aether.git /tmp/aether && cd /tmp/aether && ./install.sh && cd - && rm -rf /tmp/aether

Curl Install (No Git)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/devansharora18/aether/main/install-aether.sh | bash

Manual Install

git clone https://github.com/devansharora18/aether.git
cd aether
./install.sh

You can customize the installation using script arguments (e.g., ./install.sh --prefix ~/.local --no-sudo). Run ./install.sh --help for all options.

Or install directly via go install:

go install github.com/devansharora18/aether@latest

Usage

Interactive Mode

Simply run the command with no arguments to launch the TUI:

aether

Command Line Interface

Aether supports standard package management operations via CLI flags:

Flag	Action
-S <pkg...>	Install packages
-R <pkg...>	Remove packages
-Rn <pkg...>	Purge packages (remove + configuration files)
-Rc	Remove unused dependencies (autoremove)
-Sy	Update package database (apt update)
-Syu	Update and upgrade all packages (apt upgrade)
-Ss <query>	Search packages
-Qi <pkg...>	Show detailed package info
-Ql	List installed packages
-Qu	List upgradable packages
-Sc	Clean package cache
-v	Verbose mode (streams raw apt output)

Examples

Search for a package:

aether -Ss htop

Install a package (will prompt for sudo automatically):

aether -S htop btop

Full system upgrade:

aether -Syu

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.