arti-pack

A Neovim plugin manager that installs plugins from an artifact store instead of git. It downloads tagged upstream source archives through artifactapi and unpacks them into Neovim's native package path — see :h packages.

No git, no submodules, no network access to GitHub from the editor: every plugin arrives as a cached, immutable, tagged artifact from the same proxy that serves RPMs, containers and Terraform providers.

Requirements

• Neovim 0.10+
• curl, and unzip (or tar when using ext = 'tar.gz')

Install

Each tag is published as a source zip to the nvim-plugins artifactapi repo, so arti-pack installs the same way as everything it manages:

curl -fsSL -o /tmp/arti-pack.zip \
  https://artifactapi.k8s.syd1.au.unkin.net/api/v2/remotes/nvim-plugins/files/unkin/arti-pack/archive/refs/tags/v0.1.0.zip
mkdir -p "${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}/nvim/site/pack/arti-pack/start"
unzip -q /tmp/arti-pack.zip -d /tmp/arti-pack
mv /tmp/arti-pack/arti-pack-0.1.0 \
  "${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}/nvim/site/pack/arti-pack/start/arti-pack"

Once installed it can carry itself, since url bypasses the registry:

{
  'unkin/arti-pack',
  tag = 'v0.1.0',
  url = 'https://artifactapi.k8s.syd1.au.unkin.net/api/v2/remotes/nvim-plugins/files/unkin/arti-pack/archive/refs/tags/v0.1.0.zip',
}

Usage

require('arti-pack').setup({
  registry = 'https://artifactapi.k8s.syd1.au.unkin.net/api/v1/remote/github',
  plugins = {
    { 'nvim-lua/plenary.nvim', tag = 'v0.1.4' },
    { 'folke/which-key.nvim',  tag = 'v3.13.3', opt = true },
    { 'folke/tokyonight.nvim', tag = 'v4.10.0', as = 'tokyonight' },
    { 'tpope/vim-fugitive',    tag = 'v3.7',    ext = 'tar.gz' },
  },
})

Every plugin needs an explicit tag — that is the point. Plugins install to stdpath('data')/site/pack/arti-pack/start/<name>, or .../opt/<name> when opt = true.

Spec fields

Field	Default	Meaning
[1]	required	owner/repo
tag	required	Upstream tag, used verbatim in the archive path
opt	false	Install under opt/ for :packadd instead of start/
as	repo name	Directory name to install as
ext	'zip'	zip or tar.gz
url	—	Full archive URL, bypassing the registry

Options

Option	Default	Meaning
registry	the estate artifactapi github remote	Proxy prefix placed in front of owner/repo
auto_sync	true	Sync missing and changed plugins on startup
concurrency	4	Plugins downloaded in parallel
timeout	120	Per-download timeout in seconds

Commands

Command	Effect
:ArtiPackSync	Install missing plugins and update ones whose tag changed
:ArtiPackSync!	Reinstall everything, ignoring recorded state
:ArtiPackClean	Remove installed plugins no longer in the spec
:ArtiPackList	Show every configured plugin and its state

How it resolves an archive

<registry>/<owner>/<repo>/archive/refs/tags/<tag>.<ext>

which for the defaults is

https://artifactapi.k8s.syd1.au.unkin.net/api/v1/remote/github/nvim-lua/plenary.nvim/archive/refs/tags/v0.1.4.zip

Archives are cached under stdpath('cache')/arti-pack, checked for a real zip or gzip magic header before being trusted, and unpacked into a staging directory. Tag archives wrap their contents in a single <repo>-<version> directory, which is stripped on the way in. Installed tags are recorded in stdpath('data')/arti-pack/lock.json, so a sync with nothing to do costs nothing. Helptags are regenerated per plugin after install.

A failed plugin is reported and skipped; the rest of the run continues.

Tests

make test