Orion Package Manager

The orion package manager installs the Orion SDK and runtime by default, then installs Orion applications independently from GitHub Release artifacts. Its commands follow the familiar Homebrew model while keeping the implementation small, auditable, and usable from POSIX shells.

Install Orion

Bootstrap the package manager, development headers, libraries, and shared runtime on macOS or Linux:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/corepunch/orion-ui/main/install.sh | sudo sh
export PATH="/opt/orion/bin:$PATH"

The default prefix is /opt/orion. For an installation owned by the current user, no administrator permission is required:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/corepunch/orion-ui/main/install.sh |
  ORION_PREFIX="$HOME/.local" sh
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Set ORION_PREFIX on later commands when using a non-default prefix:

ORION_PREFIX="$HOME/.local" orion install scener

Commands 

# Browse available applications and tools
orion search
orion search editor
orion info scener

# Install one or more packages
orion install scener
orion install imageeditor terminal

# Inspect and maintain installed packages
orion list
orion update
orion uninstall scener

# Package-manager version and command summary
orion --version
orion --help

orion remove is an alias for orion uninstall, and orion upgrade is an alias for orion update.

Package Model

orion-core is installed during bootstrap and contains:

  • The orion package-manager executable.
  • Orion and Platform development headers.
  • Orion and Platform linkable runtime libraries.
  • Shared framework assets.
  • Core offline documentation.

Every application and developer tool is a separate release archive. An application package can contain its standalone executable, loadable GEM, component plugin, application assets, and documentation. Installing one application therefore does not install the complete suite.

Dependencies are resolved from the release index. For example, orion install shell also installs the FileManager and Terminal packages that the Shell loads as GEMs.

Package receipts are stored under <prefix>/.orion/installed. They record the installed version and owned files so packages can be listed, updated, and removed without deleting files owned by another package.

Build Applications With The SDK

The bootstrap installation is also an Orion development SDK. Include headers from <prefix>/include and link libraries from <prefix>/lib:

cc app.c -o app \
  -I/opt/orion/include \
  -L/opt/orion/lib \
  -lkernel -lcommctl -lcommdlg -luser -lplatform

Use $HOME/.local/include and $HOME/.local/lib when Orion was installed with ORION_PREFIX="$HOME/.local". Orion and its native Platform layer require no additional third-party libraries. Add Lua only when an application uses scripting or the interactive terminal.

The primary headers are:

#include <orion/ui.h>
#include <orion/gem.h>       /* Loadable GEM applications */
#include <platform/platform.h>

Header subdirectories are preserved, so includes used throughout the source tree work unchanged in installed application projects.

Security And Releases

Before extracting an archive, orion verifies its SHA-256 checksum against the platform package index and rejects archive paths that are absolute or contain parent-directory traversal.

Tagged releases publish separate packages for each supported platform:

Platform Identifier
macOS on Apple silicon macos-arm64
Linux on x86-64 linux-x86_64

The default channel follows the latest GitHub release. Pin a specific release when reproducibility is required:

ORION_RELEASE=v1.0.1 orion install scener

The release page contains one archive per package and platform, plus a checksummed packages-<platform>.tsv index. SDK-enabled packages are available from Orion v1.0.1 and later.

Environment Variables

Variable Purpose Default
ORION_PREFIX Installation root /opt/orion
ORION_RELEASE Release tag or latest latest
ORION_REPOSITORY GitHub owner and repository corepunch/orion-ui
ORION_RELEASE_BASE Complete release asset URL override unset

ORION_RELEASE_BASE is useful for mirrors and offline test servers. When set, it takes precedence over ORION_RELEASE and ORION_REPOSITORY.

Installed Layout 

<prefix>/bin/                 package manager, applications, and tools
<prefix>/include/orion/       Orion development headers
<prefix>/include/platform/    Platform development headers
<prefix>/lib/                 linkable libraries and component plugins
<prefix>/lib/orion/gems/      loadable Orion applications
<prefix>/share/orion/         framework assets
<prefix>/share/<app>/         application assets
<prefix>/share/doc/orion/     framework and application documentation
<prefix>/.orion/installed/    package receipts

Building Release Packages

The release workflow is defined in .github/workflows/release.yml. A v* tag builds macOS and Linux packages, uploads the matrix artifacts, creates the corresponding GitHub Release, and attaches each package separately.

Release archives can be generated locally after building the repository:

sh scripts/package-release.sh 1.0.1 macos-arm64 dist

The package catalog is packaging/packages.tsv. Each row declares the package name, description, and optional dependencies. scripts/package-release.sh stages the normal make install output and splits it according to that catalog.

Installing The Complete Suite From Source

The package manager is intended for released, on-demand installations. To install every application, GEM, tool, runtime library, asset, and document from a source checkout instead, use:

make all
sudo make install

For a user-local source installation:

make install PREFIX="$HOME/.local"

Orion UI Framework - standalone, native, and written in C11

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