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 show

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. If you are not logged in, plakar pkg add will fail with an authentication error.

To log in:

$ plakar login

For CI pipelines or automated environments where interactive login is not possible, see Logging In to Plakar.

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

$ plakar pkg add s3

To install a specific version:

$ plakar pkg add s3@v1.0.0

Package signatures

Packages are signed, and Plakar expects a signature when installing one. A package that carries no signature is rejected unless -allow-unsigned is passed explicitly:

$ plakar pkg add -allow-unsigned ./my_custom_integration.ptar

This mainly applies to packages you built yourself or obtained outside the official registry. Only use it for packages whose origin you trust.

Development integrations

Integrations that are not yet stable are published to a separate devel tree instead of the regular one. They are not listed or installed unless -devel is passed:

$ plakar pkg show -available -devel
$ plakar pkg add -devel <integration>

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 a specific package to the latest available version:

$ plakar pkg add -u s3

To upgrade all installed packages at once:

$ plakar pkg add -u

Upgrading preserves existing store, source, and destination configurations.

Remove a package

$ plakar pkg rm s3