user-yum.sh

A yum & rpm package installer for CentOS, RedHat RHE, Fedora and the likes, operating at user-privilege.

If you want to know how it works, have a look at How to install packages in Linux (CentOS) without root user with automatic dependency handling?. If you just want to install a few packages, you may want to use the above answer rather than user-yum.sh.

Usage

Installing a package

Downloading one or several package:

make +screen
make +zsh +tcl

Installing all downloaded packages:

make install

If yum can't find the package you're asking for, it'll tell you "No Match for argument ...":

$ make +vim
No Match for argument vim

Use yum search to find the correct package name before downloading it:

$ yum search vim
vim-X11.x86_64 : The VIM version of the vi editor for the X Window System
vim-common.x86_64 : The common files needed by any version of the VIM editor
vim-enhanced.x86_64 : A version of the VIM editor which includes recent
                    : enhancements
vim-filesystem.x86_64 : VIM filesystem layout
vim-minimal.x86_64 : A minimal version of the VIM editor

$ make +vim-common

Help to setup

Printing the lines to add to your .rc:

make environment

You can also use make env. It is a short alias for make environement.

This will output a block of text like the following (2018-09-29):

# Setting environment for /home/mc/y
ROOT_D="/home/mc/y"

PATH="$ROOT_D/usr/sbin:$ROOT_D/usr/bin:$ROOT_D/bin:$PATH"

L="/lib:/lib64:/usr/lib:/usr/lib64"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$L:$ROOT_D/usr/lib:$ROOT_D/usr/lib64"

Tip: You can source it using process substitution if you like:

source <(cd user-yum.sh/ && make env)

eval "$(cd user-yum.sh/ && make env)" works too. Actually, it even compatible with dash, while source <(cd user-yum.sh/ && make env) isn't.

Remove the root install folder ($ROOT_D) to remove all installed packages.

There is currently no way to remove a package from the directory after running make install so be careful: use backup or use several instances. If you've just happend to mistype make +the_wrong_name you can use make unload to clean the cache (/rpm) and the list of downloaded packages (/dwnldlist).

Helper script

If you don't want to cd into user-yum.sh to install packages, you can use the wrapper helper script em.sh (usEr-yuM), which will cd into the right directory before making your command. If you use it, the priviously mentionned commands become:

em.sh +screen
em.sh +zsh +tcl

em.sh install

source <(user-yum.sh/em.sh env)

Configuration

Root directory

You should configure the ROOT_D value in the Makefile to your liking. The default is (as of 2019-01-29) (was?):

ROOT_D := root

Install flag

You may want to remove the + prefixing the name of the packages to install. If so, change the INSTALL_FLAG_PREFIX, from

INSTALL_FLAG_PREFIX := +

to

INSTALL_FLAG_PREFIX :=