Santa - A package manager meta-tool

Santa is a comprehensive package manager abstraction layer that provides unified interfaces across different package managers and platforms. It supports multiple package sources (apt, brew, cargo, etc.) and offers features like caching, configuration management, and async command execution.

Quick Start

use santa::{SantaConfig, SantaData, KnownSources};
use std::path::Path;

# fn example() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
// Load configuration from a file
let config = SantaConfig::load_from(Path::new("santa.yaml"))?;

// Create Santa data manager with default built-in data
let santa_data = SantaData::default();

// Get sources for the current platform
let sources = santa_data.sources(&config);

// Use specific package managers
for source in sources {
    println!("Available source: {}", source.name_str());
}
# Ok(())
# }

Features

Multi-platform Support: Works across Linux, macOS, and Windows
Unified Interface: Common API for different package managers
Async Operations: Non-blocking package operations using tokio
Caching: Intelligent caching of package lists and metadata
Configuration: Flexible YAML-based configuration system
Security: Input sanitization and shell escape protection
Hot Reload: Configuration changes without restart

Architecture

Santa is built around several core concepts:

[PackageSource]: Individual package manager implementations
[SantaConfig]: Configuration management and validation
[SantaData]: Platform detection and source management
[PackageCache]: Caching layer for performance
[SantaError]: Unified error handling

Error Handling

All fallible operations return [Result<T>] where the error type is [SantaError]. This provides structured error information with context about what operation failed.

use santa::{SantaConfig, SantaError};
use std::path::Path;

match SantaConfig::load_from(Path::new("santa.yaml")) {
    Ok(config) => println!("Configuration loaded successfully"),
    Err(e) => eprintln!("Configuration error: {}", e),
}

Safety

Santa takes security seriously, especially around shell command execution:

All user inputs are sanitized before shell execution
Package names are validated against known-safe patterns
Command injection protection using shell-escape crate
No raw shell command execution from user input

Performance Considerations