tsuku

tsuku

A modern, universal package manager for development tools.

Overview

tsuku is a package manager that makes it easy to install and manage development tools across different platforms. It uses action-based recipes to download, extract, and install tools to version-specific directories with automatic PATH management.

Features

• Action-based recipes: Composable actions for downloading, extracting, and installing tools
• Version management: Tools installed in version-specific directories
• Automatic PATH management: Shell integration for easy access
• Dependency management: Automatic installation and cleanup of tool dependencies
• Ecosystem integration: Full support for npm, cargo, go, pip, gem, nix, and cpan with lockfile-based reproducibility
• Tool shell integration: Recipes can register shell functions and completions — loaded automatically via $TSUKU_HOME/env at shell startup
• No dependencies: Single binary, no system prerequisites

Installation

curl -fsSL https://get.tsuku.dev/now | bash

The installer downloads the latest release binary, verifies its checksum, and configures your shell. It also registers the command-not-found hook for your shell automatically so you get install hints when you type an unknown command.

Installer flags

Flag	Description
--no-modify-path	Skip adding tsuku to PATH in shell config files
--no-hooks	Skip registering the command-not-found hook
--no-telemetry	Opt out of anonymous usage statistics

Pass flags by piping through bash:

# Don't modify PATH or register the hook
curl -fsSL https://get.tsuku.dev/now | bash -s -- --no-modify-path --no-hooks

Hook registration details: By default, the installer detects your shell from $SHELL and runs tsuku hook install --shell=<shell> for bash, zsh, or fish. If $SHELL is unset or points to an unsupported shell, the installer warns and skips hook registration without failing. Pass --no-hooks to skip this step intentionally — you can register the hook later with:

tsuku hook install

Usage

Install a tool

tsuku install kubectl
tsuku install terraform
tsuku install gh

List installed tools

tsuku list

List installed macOS applications

tsuku list --apps

Applications installed via cask recipes are stored in $TSUKU_HOME/apps/ and symlinked to ~/Applications for Launchpad and Spotlight integration.

Update a tool

tsuku update kubectl

Self-Update

tsuku keeps itself up to date automatically. During regular background update checks, it downloads and applies new versions of itself. On the next invocation after a successful update, you'll see a brief notice: "tsuku has been updated to vX.Y.Z".

To update manually:

tsuku self-update

Self-update is enabled by default. To disable it:

tsuku config set updates.self_update false

In CI environments (CI=true), self-update is suppressed automatically. You can also disable it per-invocation with TSUKU_NO_SELF_UPDATE=1.

Update Notifications

tsuku shows brief notifications on stderr when updates are relevant:

• Applied updates: When auto-apply is enabled, you'll see Updated <tool> 1.2.0 -> 1.3.0 for each tool updated in the background.
• Failed updates: If a background update fails (and gets rolled back), tsuku tells you what happened and how to recover.
• Self-update results: After tsuku updates itself, the next invocation shows the new version.
• Available updates: When auto-apply is off, tsuku shows N updates available. Run 'tsuku update' to apply. once per check cycle.

Notifications are suppressed automatically in these contexts:

Condition	Rationale
CI=true	CI pipelines shouldn't see update noise
Non-TTY stdout	Piped or scripted output stays clean
--quiet / -q flag	User asked for silence
TSUKU_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1	Explicit opt-out of all update behavior

To force notifications in a suppressed environment (for example, a CI job that should auto-update):

TSUKU_AUTO_UPDATE=1 tsuku install kubectl

TSUKU_AUTO_UPDATE=1 overrides all suppression signals. See ENVIRONMENT.md for details.

Remove a tool

tsuku remove kubectl

Automatic Tool Discovery

tsuku automatically discovers where to find tools. Just run:

tsuku install <tool>