mere

mere is the package manager and system-management tool for Mere Linux, a lightweight Linux distribution built on musl libc.

It takes the properties that make Nix compelling — an immutable package store, atomic upgrades, build isolation, safe rollbacks — and keeps them close to traditional Unix instead of fighting it. The system is designed to be legible: everything lives on disk in a form you can read, inspect, and understand.

How It Works

Packages are stored as immutable objects in a content-addressed store at /mere/store. Each object is identified by a BLAKE3 hash of its contents, so identity is unambiguous and multiple versions coexist safely.

Profiles are symlink trees that reference store objects. A system profile defines which packages are visible; activating a new configuration creates a new generation and swaps a single symlink. Rollback is the same operation in reverse.

On a native Mere system, the root directories (/bin, /lib, /usr/bin, ...) are themselves symlinks into the active profile, so switching generations changes the entire system view atomically.

Design Principles

• Immutable store — package payloads live in a content-addressed store; changing contents produces a new object
• Generation-based profiles — every generation is a fully realized tree of selected store objects
• Atomic switching — activation is one pointer swap after the target generation is built
• Isolated builds — packages are built in a synthetic root via mount namespaces and chroot
• Explicit trust — repos and packages are accepted only when Ed25519 signatures verify against trusted keys
• Filesystem as truth — store objects, profiles, manifests, and repository databases are all inspectable on disk

Try It

mere is a statically linked binary that runs on any Linux system. You can try it alongside your existing distribution — everything lives under /mere and won't interfere with your host system.

1. Download

Grab the latest release for your architecture:

# x86_64
curl -Lo mere https://codeberg.org/merelinux/mere/releases/download/v0.18.2/mere-0.18.2-linux-x86_64

# aarch64
curl -Lo mere https://codeberg.org/merelinux/mere/releases/download/v0.18.2/mere-0.18.2-linux-aarch64

sudo install -m 755 mere /usr/local/bin/

2. Initialize

Preview what mere store init will create, then apply it:

sudo mere store init --dry-run
sudo mere store init

Add a basic config for the official repository and its public key:

sudo curl -so /mere/config.kdl https://pkgs.merelinux.org/config.kdl
sudo curl -so /mere/keys/mere.pub https://pkgs.merelinux.org/mere.pub

3. Create a profile and install packages

mere profile create test
mere install -p test python

This fetches Python and its dependencies from the Mere repository, verifies signatures, places everything in the content-addressed store at /mere/store, and realizes the profile.

4. Try it out

mere shell -p test
python3 --version

mere shell drops you into an interactive shell with the profile's packages available. Type exit to return to your host environment.

5. Explore

# search for packages
mere search python

# install more packages
mere install -p test busybox curl git

# see what's in your profile
mere profile list

# inspect the store
ls /mere/store/

# store maintenance
mere store clean --dry-run
mere store verify

Service Management

On a native Mere system, mere provides integrated service management as top-level commands. The active provider is selected in /mere/config.kdl; s6-rc and dinit both have lifecycle and introspection adapters.

settings {
    init-provider "dinit" // or "s6-rc"
}

mere status              # show all services with status
mere status nginx        # detailed view for a service
mere enable nginx        # add to boot set
mere start nginx         # bring up now
mere stop nginx          # bring down now
mere restart nginx       # stop and start
mere reload nginx        # signal config reload
mere disable nginx       # remove from boot set
mere logs nginx          # view service logs

Recipe service declarations are normalized into .mere/meta.kdl and carried in packages independently of the target init provider. During system profile realization, dinit materializes the configured package-owned service files under /usr/share/dinit.d; /etc/dinit.d remains administrator-owned. Provider-specific build-time service artifacts are retained temporarily for backward compatibility while profile reconciliation is completed. mere enable/disable change boot intent only; mere start/stop operate on live state only.

Building from Source

Requires Zig 0.16. The build system automatically fetches and builds all C library dependencies (libsodium, zstd, libarchive, libcurl, sqlite3). Host prerequisites: musl, LLVM, busybox (for sha256sum), curl, and cmake.

zig build
zig build test

Status

Pre-release. The core package manager is functional and manages a real Mere Linux system, but the CLI surface and some subsystems are still stabilizing.

Documentation

• Specification Details — full system specification
• Recipe Specification — guide to writing build recipes
• Service Management — service architecture, s6-rc, and dinit integration