Managing packages

Integration packages extend Plakar with connectors for cloud storage providers, databases, and other systems. This guide covers the full lifecycle of a package: installing, listing, upgrading, and removing.

Plakar ships intentionally clean with only base connectors such as the filesystem connector. Plakar can be extended using integrations such as S3, SFTP, PostgreSQL, or any other integration only when you need it, keeping the base install small and dependency-free.

Integrations are also versioned independently from Plakar itself, so you can pin a connector to a specific version or upgrade it without touching the rest of your setup.

List installed packages

To see which packages are currently installed:

$ plakar pkg list

List available packages

Rather than what is installed, -available shows the prebuilt packages that can be installed on the current system, which is how you discover what a given platform and architecture can run before installing anything:

$ plakar pkg show -available

Install a package

Pre-built package

Pre-built packages are hosted on Plakar’s infrastructure and require you to be logged in to download them. To log in:

$ plakar login

Once logged in, install a package by name from the official plugin registry (e.g. the S3 integration):

$ plakar pkg add s3

Building from source

If you are not logged in or prefer not to use pre-built packages, you can build packages locally with plakar pkg build. This compiles the integration from its public repository, so it does not require a Plakar account.

$ plakar pkg build s3

On success, a .ptar archive is generated in the current directory. Install it with:

$ plakar pkg add ./s3_v1.0.0_darwin_arm64.ptar

Source availability

Community integrations are open source, which is what makes both installation methods possible: a pre-built package, or a local build from the public repository. Control Plane integrations are closed source, but some of them are distributed to Community users as well, as pre-built packages only. The Windows VSS and Microsoft SQL Server connectors are the current examples.

Once installed, these behave like any other package, and they are free to install with a Plakar account. The difference is that plakar pkg build cannot produce them, since there is no public source to compile, so installing the pre-built package is the only option.

Upgrade a package

To upgrade to the latest available version, remove the existing package and reinstall it:

$ plakar pkg rm s3
$ plakar pkg add s3

Upgrading preserves existing store, source, and destination configurations.

Remove a package

$ plakar pkg rm s3