Oil

Oil is a native Linux package manager that works on any distribution. Like Nix, it installs packages to its own prefix and doesn't conflict with the host package manager. Unlike Nix, Oil is minimal, fast, and focused on generation-based rollback.

Design

• Works everywhere — no distro-specific bootstrap. One binary.
• Own prefix — installs to /usr/local/oil or ~/.local/oil. No /usr pollution.
• Generation rollback — every install creates a snapshot. Rollback with oil rollback.
• OS-gated — compile with --no-default-features to strip unused system registries.
• System registries — built-in parsers for APT, DNF, Pacman, APK, XBPS, Nix, and Linuxbrew repos. These are read-only data sources for resolving packages. Oil never delegates to host package managers. Installed files and Oil-owned state remain the source of truth.

Quick start

# Install oil (latest release)
curl -fsSL https://github.com/semitechnological/oil/releases/latest/download/oil-linux-x64 -o ~/.local/bin/oil
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/oil

# Or build from source
cargo install --git https://github.com/semitechnological/oil

# Bootstrap packages from your distro's repos (read-only)
oil search ripgrep
oil install ripgrep

Build

cargo build
cargo build --no-default-features --features "system-xbps,system-apk"

Alpenglow aarch64 benchmark

This is an Alpenglow-specific result, not a general Oil benchmark.

Metric	Oil	apk
Cold index refresh median	1.845 s	2.057 s
Cached search busybox median	0.641 s	1.458 s
Binary size	2.15 MiB	67.6 KiB
Index cache	1.78 MiB	2.46 MiB

Three cold runs before the cache-format change on an Alpine 3.21 aarch64 guest under QEMU TCG (not hardware or HVF). Oil's gzip cache is 5.5x smaller than its prior 9.90 MiB raw cache. Package installation was excluded because hello was unavailable to both commands in this guest.

Install script

A convenience installer is included:

# From a clone:
./install.sh

# Or download the latest release binary:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/semitechnological/oil/master/install.sh | bash

System registries

Oil resolves packages through existing distribution ecosystems (feature-gated):

Feature	Registry	Extractor	Systems
system-apt	Debian/Ubuntu repos	.deb	Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Pop, Kali, Parrot
system-dnf	Fedora/RHEL repos	.rpm	Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, Rocky, Alma
system-zypper	openSUSE repos (via RPM metadata)	.rpm	openSUSE (Tumbleweed/Leap), SLES
system-pacman	Arch repos	.pkg.tar.zst	Arch, Manjaro, EndeavourOS, Garuda, Artix
system-apk	Alpine/Chimera repos	.apk	Alpine, Chimera Linux
system-xbps	Void repos	.xbps	Void Linux
system-nix	Nixpkgs	Nix store	NixOS
system-opkg	OpenWrt Packages.gz	.ipk (via deb extractor)	OpenWrt, LEDE
system-eopkg	Solus eopkg-index.xml	.eopkg	Solus
system-brew	Linuxbrew	Bottles	macOS, Linux
system-flatpak	— (detect/search/list only)	daemon-based	Cross-distro
system-snap	— (detect/search/list only)	daemon-based	Cross-distro
system-emerge	— (detect/list only)	source-based	Gentoo
system-freebsd	— (detect/list only)	CLI passthrough	FreeBSD
system-guix	— (detect/list only)	CLI passthrough	Guix System
system-pkgadd	— (detect/list only)	CLI passthrough	OpenBSD
system-swupd	— (detect/list only)	CLI passthrough	Clear Linux

Default builds include all registries (system-all). Compile with --no-default-features --features "system-xbps,system-apk" to select only what you need.