The theme block sets the Default preset colors; custom_theme is used

July 6, 2026 · View on GitHub

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

What is TRX?
Features
Installation
Usage
Keybindings
Architecture
Supported Package Managers
Configuration
Roadmap
Contributing
License

What is TRX?

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.

Features

Renderer built on ratatui with 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, x keys)
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

Installation

One-liner (Recommended)

curl -fsSL https://trx.pidev.tech/install.sh | sh

From source

git 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

cargo install trx-cli

Usage

trx

Keybindings

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.

Architecture

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

PackageManager trait

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>>;
}

Concurrency model

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.

Supported Package Managers

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

Configuration

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")