Alpine Package Keeper (apk) is a package manager originally built for Alpine Linux, but now used by several other distributions as well.

The preferred build system for building apk-tools is Meson. By default, builds install under the Meson prefix (e.g. /usr/local unless overridden):

$ meson setup build
$ ninja -C build
$ meson install -C build

To install elsewhere, override the prefix when configuring, for example -Dprefix=/usr.

运行时，apk 的默认根目录（--root）指向 $HOME/.hapkg/sysroot；如需 操作系统根，显式传入 --root /。

安装 ELF 可执行文件时，会为每个可执行生成 shim，shim 会设置 HPKG_PREFIX、 LD_LIBRARY_PATH 并通过 loader 调用实际位于 $HOME/.hapkg/sysroot 下的二 进制；所有 shim 会被打包到 $HOME/.hapkg/temp/horpkgruntime.hnp（内容来自 $HOME/.hapkg/temp/horpkgruntime/bin）。

初次自动初始化会写入 HTTP 的 main/community 仓库地址。公钥和 CA 证书需要在 构建时或手动放入 ~/.hapkg/sysroot/etc/apk/keys/ 与 ~/.hapkg/sysroot/etc/ssl/certs/ 中，必要时再切换回 HTTPS（编辑 ~/.hapkg/sysroot/etc/apk/repositories）。

首次在默认根下使用时会自动初始化 ~/.hapkg/sysroot（创建数据库目录、写入 main/community 仓库并尝试获取官方公钥）；如需手动初始化，可运行 apk add --root ~/.hapkg/sysroot --initdb --usermode。

For bootstrapping without Python, muon is also compatible. All you have to do is replace meson with muon in the above example.

To build a static apk, pass the right arguments to the above commands:

# meson setup -Dc_link_args="-static" -Dprefer_static=true -Ddefault_library=static build
# ninja -C build src/apk

Which will give you a ./build/src/apk that is statically linked.

While there is a legacy Makefile-based system available, it only works for musl-linux targets, and will be dropped in the apk-tools 3.0 release.

Online documentation is available in the doc/ directory in the form of man pages.

The apk(8) man page provides a basic overview of the package management system.