Package Management

Zypper is the default package manager in SUSE Linux Base Container Images. Like APT in Debian/Ubuntu or APK in Alpine Linux, Zypper offers a command-line interface for all package management tasks. Below is a brief overview of commonly used container-related Zypper commands.

Note	Zypper is available on selected container images. Application stack containers do not include a package manager, as well as SUSE Linux BCI Micro, SUSE Linux BCI Minimal and SUSE Linux BCI BusyBox.

Quick Guide

For in-depth information on Zypper, please refer to the Zypper documentation.

Note	We use `--non-interactive` to automatically use default answers and prevent user interaction during container builds, as manual approval is not possible.

Note	The usage of `--non-interactive` does not imply a "yes to everything". Instead, it confirms what is considered to be the user’s intention. For example, a repository refresh fails if it needs to import new signing keys, as this is something that requires manual verification.

Installing packages

To install new packages, use the following command:

zypper --non-interactive install $PACKAGE_NAME

Adding repositories

To add a new repository, use the following command:

zypper --non-interactive addrepo --refresh $REPOSITORY_URL $REPOSITORY_NAME
zypper --non-interactive refresh

Updating packages

To update all packages, use the following command:

zypper --non-interactive update

Removing packages

To remove a package, use the following command:

zypper --non-interactive remove --clean-deps $PACKAGE_NAME

Note	We use `--clean-deps` to ensure that dependencies no longer required are also removed.

Cleaning up temporary files

To clean up temporary files created by Zypper, use the following command:

zypper clean --all

Removing orphaned packages

With Zypper, it is not required to remove orphaned packages as long as you remove installed packages using the following command:

zypper --non-interactive remove --clean-deps $PACKAGE_NAME

In cases where you don’t clean up dependencies, use the following command to check if orphaned packages exist:

zypper packages --orphaned

If they exist, you need to remove them manually.

Searching packages

SUSE Linux Enterprise package naming conventions differ from those of Debian, Ubuntu and Alpine. Package names are closer to those of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The main difference is that library development packages (packages containing headers and build descriptions) have the name $PACKAGE-devel in SUSE Linux Enterprise, rather than $PACKAGE-dev in Debian and Ubuntu.

When in doubt, search for the package using the following command:

zypper search $PACKAGE_NAME

Adding GPG keys

Adding external repositories normally requires importing the GPG key used for package signing in the given repository.

Use the following command to import new keys:

rpm -v --import $KEY_URL