cave

Note

Paludis / cave is slow-moving: its last release (3.0.2) and commits date to around March 2025, though the project is not archived and carries no retirement notice.

ID

cave

Links

Home page · Documentation · Repository

Upstream stars

⭐ 3

Last commit

2026-09-25

Platforms

🐧 Linux (Exherbo Linux only)

Operations

installed · orphans · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup

purl types

pkg:cave/

CLI name

cave

Every call

cave --colour no <command>

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: cave

Source

cave.toml

cave is the client of Paludis, Exherbo’s package mangler (https://paludis.exherbo.org).

Parsing notes, verified against the cave man pages (paludis.exherbo.org/clients/):

• print-ids is the only machine-parseable listing (“No formatting is used, making the output suitable for parsing by scripts”), with a caller-controlled --format; the ‘/::installed’ spec selects the installed repository.

• No search: cave search emits multi-line human records with no format control, and print-ids --matching needs an exact spec rather than a fuzzy query. No outdated either: the cave resolve plan is human-oriented.

• resolve never prompts (it refuses risky transactions instead, wanting explicit --permit-* flags), so no assume-yes flag exists or is needed.

• Execute phases (--execute) and sync need root; plan-only and print-ids calls do not.

What mpm adds to cave

mpm reaches across every manager at once, not cave alone: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover cave alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your cave commands, in mpm

You already know cave: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With cave	With mpm
List what’s installed	cave print-ids --matching */*::installed --format %c/%p %v\n	mpm --cave installed
Install a package	cave resolve --execute <package_id>	mpm install pkg:cave/<package_id>
Upgrade one package	cave resolve --execute <package_id>	mpm --cave upgrade <package_id>
Upgrade everything	cave resolve --complete world --execute	mpm --cave upgrade --all
Remove a package	cave uninstall --execute <package_id>	mpm remove pkg:cave/<package_id>
List orphaned dependencies	cave purge	mpm --cave orphans

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations

Operation	Supported	Notes
installed	✅
outdated
orphans	✅
search
install	✅
upgrade	✅
upgrade_all	✅
remove	✅
sync	✅
cleanup	✅	The --orphans flag runs the system-wide orphan sweep.
doctor

Configuration

• Ignore cave on the mpm CLI by passing the --no-cave option.

• Ignore it for every run in your configuration:

  [mpm]
  cave = false
  

• Raise the timeout of all cave calls:

  [mpm.overrides.cave]
  timeout = 900
  

• Run mpm config-template cave to print all overridable settings for your configuration file:

  [mpm.overrides.cave]
  cli_names = [
      "cave",
  ]
  cli_search_path = []
  dry_run = false
  ignore_auto_updates = true
  plan = false
  post_args = []
  pre_args = [
      "--colour",
      "no",
  ]
  pre_cmds = []
  stop_on_error = false
  unmaintained = false
  version_cli_options = [
      "--version",
  ]
  version_regexes = [
      "(?P<version>\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+)",
  ]
  

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every cave call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Recipes

A few jobs you would otherwise script around cave, one mpm command each:

• Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --cave dump cave.toml, then mpm restore cave.toml on the next one.

• Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --cave sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation

System-wide manager: mpm wraps its privileged operations in sudo out of the box. Instead of letting the tool prompt mid-run, mpm primes the credential cache up-front, with a single branded password prompt at most. Turn escalation off for rootless setups with --no-sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

Its privileged operations are cleanup, install, remove, sync, upgrade, upgrade_all.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown

State of cave’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None (Exherbo, source-based)

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

• Registry: Source-based recipe trees

• Retraction: Index revert of the recipe tree

• Publish date: ❌ a recipe carries no publication date

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Reference traces

A collection of raw native outputs captured from the manager’s own CLI and recorded in the bundled definition. If you know cave well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ cave print-ids --matching */*::installed --format %c/%p %v\n
app-arch/gzip 1.14
sys-apps/sed 4.9

$ cave purge
Done: 156 metadata, 42 steps

These are the actions I will take, in order:

<   dev-libs/libpcre-8.45:0::installed
    Reasons: purge

<   app-misc/tmux-3.3a:0::installed
    Reasons: purge

Total: 2 uninstalls

Use --execute to perform the actions I described.

Version check

The version is probed by running:

$ cave --version
cave 3.0.1

and extracted with:

r"(?P<version>\d+\.\d+\.\d+)"

Upstream project

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Changelog

• 7.4.0 (2026-07-25)

  • Their cleanup commands, both orphan sweeps (cave purge, pkg_delete -a), are re-declared as cleanup_orphan: cleanup --orphans now reaches them and cleanup --cache leaves them alone.

  • Plain cleanup no longer removes orphaned packages: their native sweeps moved behind cleanup --orphans. This also stops emerge’s cleanup from triggering its pre-depclean world upgrade unless --orphans is given.

• 7.2.0 (2026-07-09)

  • Add cave (Exherbo’s Paludis client) with installed, install, upgrade, remove, sync and cleanup support; a bundled configuration-defined manager.