Show HN: Xpt – minimalist C package manager
Developer juanvel400 released Xpt, a ~2,000-line C package manager built for simplicity, with SQLite-backed package tracking and POSIX shell build tooling.
Xpt, a minimalist package manager written in C, was posted to Hacker News on August 12, 2026 by developer juanvel400 under the Show HN banner, per the HN listing. The project's source is hosted at git.sr.ht/~juanvel400/xpt.
The tool clocks in at roughly ~2,000 lines of C, according to the author's own description in the Show HN post. Core features include a SQLite-backed package database, dependency resolution with repository sync, and a companion utility called ebt — a POSIX shell toolkit for building packages.
Juanvel400 says the motivation was straightforward: existing package managers felt too large and difficult to read in full. The goal with Xpt was to build something simple enough that a single developer could understand the entire codebase. The project is described as functional but not yet polished or production-ready, and known issues are documented in the repository's README.
The author is explicitly seeking feedback from developers interested in minimalist tooling. No contributors, funding, or organizational affiliation are mentioned in the source material.
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