Show HN: Pkgbot – Fast Linux package search engine

Developer knadh launched Pkgbot at pkg.bot, a Linux package search engine built on the Repology data dump that indexes roughly 2.7 million packages across more than 100 package repositories. The tool offers sorting and filtering by parameters including license and version, plus JSON and CSV APIs intended for terminal display and LLM querying, and knadh plans to add a DNS server for querying packages over DNS. The project is hosted on GitHub and was posted to Hacker News as a Show HN.

I recently switched to NixOS and in the process of setting it up, found the package search on its repo site very clunky and tedious. No permalink to share, no way to find or sort by recency or version. That got me thinking that most repo websites, including aggregators like pkgs.org and repology.org have the same issue with UX AUR is nice and simple though . So I made https://pkg.bot https://pkg.bot on top of the excellent Repology data dump specifically with the following subjective goals: - Good, non-bloated, non-clunky UI and UX opinionated, the way I would like it - Sorting and filtering across many parameters license, version It has ~2.7m packages across 100+ package repos indexed. There are JSON APIs + CSV APIs for direct terminal display / easy LLM querying . I'm planning to add a DNS server also so that packages can by queried over DNS ala https://dns.toys https://dns.toys Source: https://github.com/knadh/pkg.bot https://github.com/knadh/pkg.bot Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49730611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49730611 Points: 1 Comments: 0