Nimble¶

ID: nimble
Links: Documentation · Repository
Upstream stars: ⭐ 1,404
Last commit: 2026-09-25
Version requirement: >= 0.22
Platforms: 🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS · ⨂ Unix · 🪟 Windows
Operations: installed · search · install · remove · sync
purl types: pkg:nim/ · pkg:nimble/
CLI name: nimble
Every call: nimble --noColor --accept <command>
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: nim-based
Source: nimble.py

Nimble, the package manager of the Nim language.

A package is a Nim library or binary, identified by the bare name the registry publishes it under.

What `mpm` adds to `nimble`¶

Through mpm, nimble 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Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover nimble alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of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 `nimble` commands, in `mpm`¶

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

To…	With `nimble`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`nimble list --installed --ver`	`mpm --nimble installed`
Search for a package	`nimble search parsetoml`	`mpm --nimble search parsetoml`
Install a package	`nimble install checksums`	`mpm install pkg:nimble/checksums`
Remove a package	`nimble uninstall checksums`	`mpm remove pkg:nimble/checksums`

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`	✅	Nimble keeps several versions of a package side by side; the listing reports the newest per name.
`outdated`	❌	No command reports which installed packages have newer releases.
`orphans`
`search`	✅	Exact and extended search backfilled by `mpm`.
`install`	✅
`upgrade`	❌	The tool’s `upgrade` acts on a project’s lock file, not the machine, and a reinstall adds the newest version beside the old one.
`upgrade_all`
`remove`	✅
`sync`	✅
`cleanup`
`doctor`

Configuration¶

Ignore nimble on the mpm CLI by passing the --no-nimble option.
Ignore it for every run in your configuration:
```
[mpm]
nimble = false
```
Raise the timeout of all nimble calls:
```
[mpm.overrides.nimble]
timeout = 900
```

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

[mpm.overrides.nimble]
cli_names = [
    "nimble",
]
cli_search_path = []
dry_run = false
ignore_auto_updates = true
plan = false
post_args = []
pre_args = [
    "--noColor",
    "--accept",
]
pre_cmds = []
requirement = ">=0.22.0"
stop_on_error = false
unmaintained = false
version_cli_options = [
    "--version",
]
version_regexes = [
    "nimble[ \\t]+v(?P<version>\\S+)",
]

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every nimble 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 nimble, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --nimble dump nimble.toml, then mpm restore nimble.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --nimble 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 is privileged.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of Nimble’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: Nim package index (pkg:nim)
Retraction: Index revert: the registry is a single packages.json in nim-lang/packages mapping a name to a git URL, so withdrawal is a pull request deleting the entry; the code itself lives in third-party repositories that can also vanish under the index
Publish date: ❌ the index carries no versions at all, only names and URLs, versions being the git tags of the repository each entry points at, so nothing in it dates a release

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 manager source. If you know Nimble well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ nimble --noColor --accept list --installed --ver
Package list format:
{PackageName}
└── @{Version} ({CheckSum})[Special Versions (if any)] ({InstallPath})
parsetoml
├── @0.7.2 (2a9fb57ef1f6460fd61b1cfab2d83af44f788a25) (/Users/kde/.nimble/pkgs2/parsetoml-0.7.2-2a9fb57ef1f6460fd61b1cfab2d83af44f788a25)
└── @0.7.1 (586fe63467a674008c4445ed1b8ac882177d7103) (/Users/kde/.nimble/pkgs2/parsetoml-0.7.1-586fe63467a674008c4445ed1b8ac882177d7103)

Version check¶

The version is probed by running:

$ nimble --version
nimble v0.22.2 compiled at 2026-04-24 03:34:24
git hash: couldn't determine git hash

and extracted with:

r"nimble[ \t]+v(?P<version>\S+)"

Upstream project¶

Metrics	`nim-lang/nimble`
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Changelog¶

8.0.0 (2026-09-20)
- Add the Nimble Nim package manager with installed, search, install, remove and sync support, the inventory forcing --ver so every package carries its version.