stew

Note

stew is a single-maintainer project; its last release was 0.6.0 (April 2025) and issues have since accumulated, though it is not archived.

ID

stew

Link

Repository

Upstream stars

⭐ 355

Last commit

2025-05-06

Version requirement

>= 0.3

Platforms

🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS · 🪟 Windows

Operations

installed · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove

purl types

pkg:stew/

CLI name

stew

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: stew

Source

stew.toml

Stew installs pre-compiled binaries from GitHub Releases.

Parsing notes:

• stew search launches an interactive terminal UI and cannot be used programmatically, so no search operation is declared.

• Stew identifies packages by binary name for upgrade and uninstall, but uses the owner/repo format for install.

• stew list --tags mixes two line shapes: GitHub-sourced packages (“binary:owner/repo@tag”, whose tag is the version, cosmetic “v” prefix stripped) and URL-sourced packages (“binary:url”, carrying no version). The installed regex alternation covers both, keeping the version group out of the URL branch so those packages are yielded version-less.

What mpm adds to stew

mpm reaches across every manager at once, not stew alone: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover stew alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of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

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

To…	With stew	With mpm
List what’s installed	stew list --tags	mpm --stew installed
Install a package	stew install <package_id>	mpm install pkg:stew/<package_id>
Upgrade one package	stew upgrade <package_id>	mpm --stew upgrade <package_id>
Upgrade everything	stew upgrade --all	mpm --stew upgrade --all
Remove a package	stew uninstall <package_id>	mpm remove pkg:stew/<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
installed	✅
outdated
orphans
search
install	✅
upgrade	✅
upgrade_all	✅
remove	✅
sync
cleanup
doctor

Configuration

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

• Ignore it for every run in your configuration:

  [mpm]
  stew = false
  

• Raise the timeout of all stew calls:

  [mpm.overrides.stew]
  timeout = 900
  

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

  [mpm.overrides.stew]
  cli_names = [
      "stew",
  ]
  cli_search_path = []
  dry_run = false
  ignore_auto_updates = true
  plan = false
  post_args = []
  pre_args = []
  pre_cmds = []
  requirement = ">=0.3.0"
  stop_on_error = false
  unmaintained = false
  version_cli_options = [
      "--version",
  ]
  version_regexes = [
      "stew version v(?P<version>\\S+)",
  ]
  

Recipes

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

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

• Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --stew 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 stew’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: 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); --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 stew well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ stew list --tags
gh:cli/[email protected]
fzf:junegunn/[email protected]
hyperfine:https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine/releases/download/v1.12.0/hyperfine-v1.12.0-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
rg:BurntSushi/[email protected]

Version check

The version is probed by running:

$ stew --version
stew version v0.6.0

and extracted with:

r"stew version v(?P<version>\S+)"

Upstream project

Metrics	marwanhawari/stew
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Changelog

• 7.3.0 (2026-07-17)

  • Convert from a Python class to a bundled configuration definition, its two installed-listing regexes merged into one alternation, with no functional change.

• 6.3.0 (2026-04-09)

  • Add Stew package manager for installing pre-compiled binaries from GitHub Releases. Closes #1680.