archon

A cross-distro package manager with a security-monitored, AUR-aware core for Arch Linux.

On Arch, archon resolves dependencies across the official repos and AUR, builds AUR packages in a bubblewrap sandbox, and installs the resulting archives through pacman. Optional eBPF monitoring is available with --report. Other supported distro families delegate installation to their native package manager. Version 0.2.0 is experimental; unresolved security findings and verification limits are documented in AUDIT.md.

Features

• Unified dependency resolution (Arch): official repos + AUR in one graph, with provides=() virtual packages, version constraints, conflict detection, bounded backtracking, check dependencies, and dependency-first AUR builds grouped by PackageBase.
• Sandboxed AUR builds: two-stage makepkg under bubblewrap — network allowed only while fetching sources, fully unshared during the build.
• eBPF build monitoring (--report): policy checks for captured exec, file-open and connection events. Flagged and zero-event reports block installation. Live coverage and root-path safety remain unverified.
• Smart search: results ranked by AUR popularity (what users actually install), exact matches pinned first — plus automatic "did you mean" suggestions when an exact name isn't found.
• Cross-distro: detects the host via /etc/os-release and delegates to apt, dnf, zypper, apk, nix-env, xbps, or emerge.
• Plans and confirmation: inspect a request with --dry-run before installation. Cross-distro end-to-end behavior remains unverified.

Installation

cargo install archon-cli

This installs a binary named archon into ~/.cargo/bin (make sure it's on your PATH). The package is archon-cli because the name archon was taken on crates.io — the command you type is still archon.

To use sudo archon ... --report (root is required to load the eBPF monitor), symlink the binary onto root's secure_path:

sudo ln -sf "$(which archon)" /usr/local/bin/archon

Requirements: Rust stable (that's all — the compiled eBPF monitor ships embedded in the binary). On Arch, the sandbox additionally needs bubblewrap (sudo pacman -S bubblewrap) and cgroups v2 (the default on any current install). Other distros need nothing beyond their own package manager.

From source:

git clone https://github.com/ravindran-dev/archon
cd archon
cargo install --path crates/archon --locked

Quick start

archon search chrome              # ranked search: official repos + AUR
archon plan firefox               # show the full install plan, change nothing
archon install firefox            # resolve, confirm, install
archon install google-chrome      # sandbox-build AUR package, then install via pacman
sudo archon install spotify --report   # build under eBPF monitoring, install only if clean
archon remove firefox             # pre-checked removal via pacman -Rs
archon build ./path/to/pkgbuild   # sandbox-build a local PKGBUILD (never installs)

Useful flags: --dry-run (plan only, no changes), --yes (skip archon's prompt), --all (search: show every match instead of the top 15).

Supported distros

Family	Detected via	Delegates to
Arch (Manjaro, EndeavourOS, …)	ID/ID_LIKE=arch	resolver + AUR + sandbox; optional eBPF monitor
Debian / Ubuntu (Mint, Pop!_OS, …)	debian/ubuntu	apt
Fedora / RHEL (Rocky, Alma, …)	fedora/rhel	dnf
openSUSE / SLE	suse/opensuse	zypper
Alpine	alpine	apk
NixOS	nixos	nix-env (no sudo — installs to your user profile)
Void	void	xbps
Gentoo	gentoo	emerge

Off Arch, the native tool owns dependency resolution and its own confirmation — archon provides detection and one consistent CLI. --yes maps to each tool's own assume-yes flag; --report isn't available off Arch (it needs the PKGBUILD build-recipe model) and says so instead of silently ignoring the flag. Anything unlisted gets a clear error naming what was detected. Adding a backend is a small trait impl — see docs/DESIGN.md.

Security monitoring in action

The repo ships a deliberately malicious demo package. Building it under the monitor:

sudo archon build ./demo/archon-demo-evil --report

Build report for archon-demo-evil
  3022 syscall event(s) observed
  9 event(s) FLAGGED:
    [!] wrote outside $srcdir/$pkgdir: /var/tmp/archon-evil-marker
    [!] wrote outside $srcdir/$pkgdir: /tmp/archon-evil-marker
    [!] connected to undeclared address: 1.1.1.1:80

==> build FLAGGED — treat the output as untrusted.

The example above is a pre-audit demonstration, not a result reproduced by this audit. Live benign/malicious build behavior remains UNVERIFIED. Details in docs/DESIGN.md.

Development

cargo build --workspace   # stable toolchain only
cargo test --workspace    # HTTP mocks need localhost sockets; sandbox tests need bwrap support

The workspace is nine crates (types, repo parser, AUR client, resolver, sandbox, eBPF monitor + common ABI, distro backends, CLI). Architecture, crate map, testing philosophy, the crates.io publishing procedure, and the design notes behind every non-obvious decision — including the bugs only live testing could find — are in docs/DESIGN.md.

Known Limitations

Archon 0.2.0 remains experimental. See AUDIT.md for failed-first regressions, raw verification logs, and unresolved security findings. The empty-database fixture and all-target clippy failures reported on 2026-10-20 are fixed, and the full locked workspace suite and strict all-target clippy have since passed on the user's Arch environment. The six-distro container matrix, live privileged AUR transaction/signature enforcement, and eBPF monitoring still need successful end-to-end runs before production use.

• Arch resolution now backtracks across alternatives and providers, including late conflicts. Search is bounded (100,000 steps by default); exhaustion returns an explicit error. This does not guarantee every solvable request completes within the limit.
• AUR check dependencies are included, and selected split outputs sharing a PackageBase build together. Dynamic PKGBUILD metadata, VCS freshness, stale clones, and changing upstream dependencies still need live coverage.
• Non-Arch installs delegate to native package managers. The experimental AptLists parser/resolver is not used for these installs; Debian multiarch qualifiers, Breaks, and Replaces are not fully modeled in that API.
• Local archon build requires the Arch makepkg toolchain. A managed Arch container backend and a clearer non-Arch preflight remain unresolved.
• Ordinary AUR installs build in bwrap and then install through native pacman. Before the first AUR install, run archon setup-helper once; this requests administrator authorization to copy the companion archon-install-helper to /usr/local/libexec as root-owned mode 0755. It does not set the helper setuid. The receiver accepts only bounded package/signature bytes on stdin, stages them in root-private storage, and passes staged archives to pacman without changing /etc/pacman.conf; pacman remains responsible for native signature verification and transaction confirmation. LocalFileSigLevel requirements are supported when valid adjacent signatures are provided. eBPF is optional through --report. Zero-event and flagged reports block installation. Live tracepoint compatibility, event loss, malicious builds, and privileged installation are UNVERIFIED in this audit environment.
• --report fails closed on non-Arch systems because their native package managers do not use Archon’s AUR build/monitor pipeline.
• Install/remove reject empty package names and names beginning with - so CLI input cannot be consumed as a native package-manager option.
• The install helper gives pacman the controlling terminal for its transaction prompt; package bytes remain on the helper protocol stream. The root-owned helper must be refreshed with archon setup-helper for this fix to take effect.
• PGP imports now execute inside bwrap as the build user, with strict fingerprints and GPG options disabled. The parent never modifies the build keyring. Real unprivileged bwrap/GPG preparation is tested; privileged user switching and successful signature verification still need end-to-end checks.
• Archive identity is checked with pacman; ambiguous outputs fail explicitly. The archive and adjacent signature are frozen before transfer, then staged privately by the root-owned receiver. Hermetic protocol tests pass; the real privileged receiver and native signature enforcement remain UNVERIFIED here. Custom pacman.conf repository priority, cache concurrency, and all package relationship combinations have not been exhaustively audited.
• ALPM comparison matched native vercmp for 900 tested pairs. Native dpkg parity remains UNVERIFIED here because dpkg is absent. Cross-backend comparisons now return typed errors instead of panicking.
• Build, strict all-target clippy, formatting, and the full locked workspace suite passed in the user's Arch environment (229 tests, 0 failures) before the latest fail-closed report and argument-validation changes. Their focused regressions and strict clippy pass; rerun the full suite before release. The agent sandbox cannot bind localhost sockets for HTTP mock tests. A real benign sandbox build reaches Fetch but Build fails because the environment denies NETLINK_ROUTE sockets; network isolation remains enabled. The six-distro Docker matrix is supplied but UNVERIFIED because Docker is absent. Run scripts/matrix.sh and optionally scripts/matrix.sh --install on a Docker host; transactions occur only inside disposable containers.

License

MIT