Comparison

slacker is built to feel familiar to anyone who uses slackpkg and slackpkg+, while folding both into one tool and adding a few things of its own. This page is about positioning, not putting other tools down — slackpkg and slackpkg+ are excellent and slacker borrows their best ideas on purpose.

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slacker vs slackpkg vs slackpkg+

	slackpkg	slackpkg + slackpkg+	slacker
Language	Bash	Bash	Rust (single binary)
Official mirror	yes	yes	yes — and it is just one repo whose priority you choose
Multiple repositories	no	yes (via slackpkg+)	yes, first-class
Repo precedence	n/a	priority list	priority model with no silent migration or downgrade
.dep dependencies	no	yes	yes (same-repo, recursive)
GPG on metadata	yes	yes	yes, fail-closed
Per-package signature at install	partial	partial	yes (.txz.asc) under all
GPG key pinning (TOFU)	no	no	yes
Misbehaving-repo quarantine	no	no	yes (vet/trust/distrust)
Package-change history	no	no	yes (history, even for changes by other tools)
Blacklist	series + name + regex	series + name + regex	regex + series/ + @repo scoping, frozen vs hidden
Templates	yes	yes	yes (generate/install/remove/delete)
clean-system baseline	official	official	official + immutable repos
Config	plain text	plain text	plain text

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What slacker keeps from slackpkg

Action parity and muscle memory: update, install, upgrade, remove, clean-system, file-search, templates, ChangeLog tracking, .new config handling, the numbered multi-match chooser, and the same exit-code conventions. It is a thin layer over installpkg/upgradepkg/removepkg — it never reimplements them.

What slacker keeps from slackpkg+

Many repositories in one priority-ordered model, and .dep-based dependency resolution with no dependency guessing. The official mirror is just another repo.

What slacker adds

• A strict priority guarantee. A distinct, high priority locks a repo's packages — nothing lower can replace or "upgrade" them, only an explicit repo:name pin. See Repositories and Priority.
• mirror/<subpath> URLs and a subtree flag so extra/testing/patches track whichever mirror you picked, correctly.
• Trust-on-first-use key pinning and a quarantine model for repos. See Security.
• history — a real, newest-first package-change timeline reconstructed from the pkgtools admin dirs, covering changes made by any tool. See Package History.
• Honest verification labels — it tells you exactly which checks passed (verified: gpg (signer) + md5).

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What it is not

• It is not a source builder. It installs binary packages and resolves declared .dep dependencies; it does not build from SlackBuilds. Pair it with SBo tooling for that (and protect those builds with a tag priority).
• It does not guess dependencies. No .dep, no automatic deps — by design.
• It is beta / WIP: built for Slackware64-current, for testers. See Status and Roadmap.