Soar¶

ID: soar
Home page: https://github.com/pkgforge/soar
Version requirement: >= 0.12
Platforms: 🐧 Linux
Operations: installed · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup
purl types: pkg:soar
CLI name: soar
Every call: soar --no-color <command>
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: soar
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/soar.toml

soar is a fast package manager for portable Linux binaries and AppImages.

soar is pre-1.0 and makes no cross-minor compatibility promise, so the >=0.12.0 floor tracks the 0.12 CLI surface parsed below (list-installed, search, -y, --no-color) rather than an older release.

Parsing notes, verified against the soar-cli 0.12.6 source:

soar --json emits newline-delimited log records, not one JSON array, so the DSL’s flat-JSON parser cannot consume it; the readable text output is parsed instead.
--no-color (a global flag; soar does NOT honor NO_COLOR) strips ANSI so the line regexes see clean text.
install and remove block on an interactive prompt unless -y is passed, which would hang mpm’s non-interactive subprocess.
No outdated: soar has no non-mutating “list upgradable” command, so mpm auto-skips that operation.

What `mpm` adds to `soar`¶

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Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover soar alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of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

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

To…	With `soar`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`soar list-installed`	`mpm --soar installed`
Search for a package	`soar search <query>`	`mpm --soar search <query>`
Install a package	`soar install -y <package_id>`	`mpm install pkg:soar/<package_id>`
Upgrade one package	`soar update <package_id>`	`mpm --soar upgrade <package_id>`
Upgrade everything	`soar update`	`mpm --soar upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`soar remove -y <package_id>`	`mpm remove pkg:soar/<package_id>`
Clear caches	`soar clean --cache`	`mpm --soar cleanup --cache`

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 `soar`¶

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

[mpm]
soar = false

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

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

[mpm.managers.soar]
timeout = 900

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

Recipes¶

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

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --soar dump soar.toml, then mpm restore soar.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --soar 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 Soar’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None (static-binary installer)

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: GitHub release assets
Retraction: None: withdrawing a build is the upstream author deleting their own release or tag. Nothing sits between them and the user
Publish date: ✅ server-set published_at on each release (REST API)

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:

$ soar --version
soar 0.12.6

and extracted with:

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

Reference traces¶

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

$ soar list-installed
bat-0.24.0:soarpkgs (2025-01-15) (1.8 MB)
google-chrome-131.0:soarpkgs (2025-01-14) (95.2 MB)
7-zip-24.09:soarpkgs (2025-01-10) (1.5 MB) [Broken]

$ soar search {query}
[+] bat#official:soarpkgs | 0.24.0 | archive - A cat clone (1.8 MB)
[✓] ripgrep#official:soarpkgs | 14.1.0 | archive - Fast search (4.2 MB)

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 --soar installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog¶

7.1.0 (2026-07-07)
- Add Soar (pkgforge) package manager with installed, search, install, upgrade, remove, sync, and cleanup support on Linux; a bundled configuration-defined manager. Requires soar >=0.12.0.