`flox search` command

NAME

flox-search - search for packages

SYNOPSIS

flox [<general options>] search
     [--json]
     [-a]
     <search-term>

DESCRIPTION

Search for available packages.

Searches are performed in the context of the environment if one exists, making use of the environment’s lock file and the locked base catalog within it if either one exists. Searches performed outside of an environment query a global base catalog. Both the global and environment’s base catalogs can be updated with flox-update(1).

A limited number of search results are reported by default for brevity. The full result set can be returned via the -a flag.

Only the package name and description are shown by default. Structured search results can be returned via the --json flag. More specific information for a single package is available via the flox-show(1) command.

Package names

Packages are organized in a hierarchical structure such that certain packages are found at the top level (e.g. ripgrep), and other packages are found under package sets (e.g. python310Packages.pip). We call this location within the catalog the “pkg-path”.

The pkg-path is searched when you execute a flox search command. The pkg-path is what’s shown by flox show. Finally, the pkg-path appears in your manifest after a flox install.

[install]
ripgrep.pkg-path = "ripgrep"
pip.pkg-path = "python310Packages.pip"

Fuzzy search

When only given a package name, flox search uses a fuzzy search mechanism that tries to match either the package name itself or some portion of the pkg-path.

The search query can also include a version filter following the familiar semver syntax (@ between the package and version).

$ flox search 'python@>2'

For packages that have a version that doesn’t comform to semantic versioning you can use the = operator in the version filter and the search will perform an exact match on the version supplied.

$ flox search foo@=2023-11

OPTIONS

Search Options

<search-term>
The package name to search for.

--json
Display the search results in JSON format.

-a, --all
Display all search results (default: at most 10).

General Options

-h, --help
Prints help information.

The following options can be passed when running any flox subcommand but must be specified before the subcommand.

-v, --verbose
Increase logging verbosity. Invoke multiple times for increasing detail.

-q, --quiet
Silence logs except for errors.

flox search command