package

The package module manages system packages. It automatically detects the host’s package manager.

Usage

package "nginx" state="present"
package "vim" state="present"
package "telnet" state="absent"

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
(positional)	string	Package name
state	string	"present" (install) or "absent" (remove)

Supported Package Managers

Manager	Distributions
apt	Debian, Ubuntu
dnf	Fedora, RHEL 8+
yum	CentOS, RHEL 7
pacman	Arch Linux
apk	Alpine Linux
zypper	openSUSE
nix	NixOS

The package manager is detected automatically based on the target host’s OS.

For installing Nix packages on non-NixOS distributions, use the nix module instead.

On NixOS, package installs into the invoking user’s profile (via nix-env), not system-wide configuration in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix. For system-wide installs, edit the NixOS configuration directly or use the nix module with an explicit profile=.

Idempotency

The module checks if the package is already installed (or already absent) before acting. No action is taken if the current state matches the desired state.

Example

step "Install web stack" {
    package "nginx" state="present"
    package "certbot" state="present"
    package "curl" state="present"
}

step "Remove unused" {
    package "telnet" state="absent"
}