ZPico

The minuscule zsh package manager. No frills, no bloat, under 5 kB of 100% Zsh code, providing complete package management for your Zsh environment.

Zsh package managers are abundant, but most are bloated, slow or have excessive requirements. On top of that, more than a few have been abandoned for years. Zpico does not seek to be the best of the best, rather to balance functionality against a tiny, fast footprint.

Installation

Requires git.

curl -sL --create-dirs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thornjad/zpico/main/zpico.zsh -o $HOME/.local/lib/zpico/zpico.zsh

Then add source $HOME/.local/lib/zpico/zpico.zsh to your .zshrc and reload your shell.

This is the recommended installation path, but you can put it wherever you want.

Usage

Add packages

zpico add <package-repo> [[source:<source>] [branch:<branch>] [use:<glob>]]

This command downloads and initializes a given package. If the package has already been downloaded, it initializes only.

The required argument package-repo is the package's repo in <group>/<project> format (supports Gitlab subgroups with source:gitlab).

The optional argument source: determines the source domain to get the package from. Currently supports github, gitlab, framagit, codeberg and the special local (see Local packages below). If omitted, defaults to source:github.

The optional argument branch specifies the Git branch to use. If omitted, uses the default branch for the package (typically master, main or trunk).

The optional argument use specifies the file (or file pattern) to use.

Other URL

Zpico can also load packages from arbitrary git-cloneable URLs.

zpico add https://example.com/user/repo.git [branch:<branch>]

The optional argument branch works the same as specified above.

Local packages

zpico add <package-path> source:local [branch:<branch>]

The optional argument branch works the same as specified above.

Other commands

Precede all commands with zpico.

command	description
remove <pkg>	remove a specific package
remove --all	remove all installed packages
update <pkg>	update a specific package
update --all	update all installed packages
selfupdate	update zpico (requires curl, or reinstall manually)
help	print help text
version	print version info

Customize package installation path

The default package installation path is ~/.local/share/zpico/plugins/. Customize this by setting ZP_PLUGIN_HOME prior to loading Zpico in your ~/.zshrc.

Example

# ~/.zshrc
source ~/.local/lib/zpico/zpico.zsh

# Packages
zpico add nocttuam/autodotenv
zpico add zdharma/zsh-diff-so-fancy
zpico add thornjad/vero source:gitlab

Uninstall

rm -rf ~/.local/lib/zpico ~/.local/share/zpico

Replace paths with the correct ones if you've customized them, then remove any Zpico-related commands from your ~/.zshrc.

License

Copyright (c) 2021-2026 Jade Michael Thornton

See LICENSE for terms (it's the ISC license).

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