micro editor¶

ID: micro
Home page: https://micro-editor.github.io
Version requirement: >= 2
Platforms: 🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS · ⨂ Unix · 🪟 Windows
Operations: installed · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove
purl types: pkg:micro
CLI name: micro
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: micro
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/micro.toml

micro is a terminal text editor (https://micro-editor.github.io), and what is wrapped here is its plugin manager.

An editor’s plugin manager usually fails the test that decides whether a tool can be driven with nobody at the keyboard, and micro passes it outright: the -plugin flag is handled before the screen is ever initialized, writing to standard output and exiting, so no terminal is required and no interface is drawn. It also owns a real registry rather than fetching whatever Git URL a user names: a curated channel of plugin manifests, each carrying semantic versions and dependency constraints that micro resolves against its own version.

No logo is declared: Simple Icons carries no mark for the editor, so the manager page keeps its default package glyph rather than borrowing an unrelated one.

Warning

micro always exits zero from a plugin command, whatever happened. Installing a plugin that does not exist, a failed download and an unresolvable dependency all report success, because the flag handler exits zero unconditionally and writes its diagnosis to standard output rather than to standard error. mpm reports what the tool reports, so a failed install here shows as a success. Reading the output is the only way to tell, and this definition deliberately does not try to guess at error strings that upstream never promised to keep.

Note

The inventory reports the plugins micro has loaded, not every plugin on disk: one installed but disabled in the editor’s settings is skipped. That is micro’s own notion of what is installed, and it is the set its own commands act on.

No outdated: nothing non-mutating reports a remote version. The catalog listing prints names alone, the search command prints no versions at all, and the only comparison against the registry happens inside the update, which installs as it goes. upgrade --all is unaffected.

No sync: there is no command that refreshes the plugin channel without also acting on it. No cleanup either.

No escalation: plugins live under the editor’s own configuration directory, which follows $MICRO_CONFIG_HOME or the XDG configuration home before falling back to ~/.config/micro.

What `mpm` adds to `micro`¶

Through mpm, micro gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover micro 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 `micro` commands, in `mpm`¶

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

To…	With `micro`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`micro -plugin list`	`mpm --micro installed`
Search for a package	`micro -plugin available`	`mpm --micro search available`
Install a package	`micro -plugin install <package_id>`	`mpm install pkg:micro/<package_id>`
Upgrade one package	`micro -plugin update <package_id>`	`mpm --micro upgrade <package_id>`
Upgrade everything	`micro -plugin update`	`mpm --micro upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`micro -plugin remove <package_id>`	`mpm remove pkg:micro/<package_id>`

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`	✓	exact and extended search backfilled by `mpm`
`install`	✓
`upgrade`	✓
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓
`sync`
`cleanup`
`doctor`

Selecting and configuring `micro`¶

Deselect micro for a single run with --no-micro, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
micro = false

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.micro]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template micro prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes¶

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

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --micro dump micro.toml, then mpm restore micro.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --micro sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

None of its operations needs root.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

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

Status: ❌ None

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: Git-manifest indexes
Retraction: Index revert: reverting the manifest, Portfile or derivation commit withdraws the version
Publish date: ❌ only the commit date, which is client-set and trivially backdated

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

Version probe¶

The version is probed by running:

$ micro -version
Version: 2.0.12
Commit hash: c2cebaa3
Compiled on May 16, 2024

and extracted with:

r"^Version:[ \t]+(?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the bundled definition: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know micro editor well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ micro -plugin list
The following plugins are currently installed:
editorconfig (1.0.0)
fzf (1.1.1)
lsp (0.6.2)
autoclose (built-in)
comment (built-in)
diff (built-in)

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --micro installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog¶

7.7.0.dev0 (unreleased)
- Add the micro editor’s plugin manager with installed, search, install, upgrade and remove support, shipped as a bundled definition. Its plugin flag is handled before the editor’s screen is initialized, so it runs headlessly, and its plugins come from a channel micro curates rather than from arbitrary Git URLs. Note that micro exits zero from every plugin command whatever the outcome, so a failed install is reported as a success.