Repo link: https://github.com/RQuarx/hone/

For anyone who wants to give feedback and help, I will appreciate it. As this is my first "big project" if you can say so...

So started out using cower, then switched to auracle. Didn't even realize that auracle is no longer maintained and stopped working for me yesterday. Anyway I'm looking for a new AUR helper. Would anyone have any suggestions for an aur helper similar to cower/auracle?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Thanks for all your suggestion. Opted for paru at the moment. Does what I need it to do.

Hi guys. First of all, my english kinda sucks so i hope my post doesnt give you headaches.

I've been using paru as my AUR helper for 2 weeks now, and besides the fact that paru is wriitten in rust, and Yay is in go, I really dont see any difference between the two. I recently learned that one of yay's maintainers has left the project so yay wouldnt be as much maintained as before so I switched to paru. But really, would it be that much of a deal to stick with YAY ? And Why?

im getting download speeds in bytes per second and 5-20 KiB/s it fluctuates. idk what happened everything was alright few days ago apparently my spotify, steam and discord isnt opening anymore. i tried reflector and its also getting timed out. its so annoying ffs. i think something broke my arch linux

Here's a little project I made in like a week for personal use.

I honestly can't find any bugs on my own so I was wondering if people could find them for me.

https://github.com/LiterallyKirby/Popstar

And if there's something that frustrates you about most AUR helpers

I now this helper was very popular a few years ago, but is it a good option now?

Github Repo

AUR

idk if is out-of-date

Since pacaur is discounted I wonder what is currently the best alternative?

@edit: Thanks for all the quick answers. Will use "yay" :)

I'm going to repeat what I wrote on the forums.

GitLab: https://gitlab.com/patlefort/pat-aur
AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/pat-aur-git

pat-aur is a new AUR helper that aims at building packages in clean containers. Current popular aur helpers don't do that by default, my goal is rectify this by making it mandatory.

The core features are:

• Correctness: Build in clean containers always.
• Configurable: Configure builds by host, target and package.
• Parallelization: Build multiple packages in parallel. Parallel download of sources and dependencies.
• Cross-compilation: Build packages for other architectures. (with caveats and limitations at the moment)

pat-aur is not a pacman wrapper. It does not aim at replacing pacman. There are a few things to know at the moment:

• ninja: I created a package named ninja-jobserver, which is ninja with job server client and server support. It needs to be installed on the host and mapped in target config for better parallelization across builds. Read the readme. Hopefully it will be merged into ninja soon.
• elvish-git need to be used. The next stable version should be fine.
• bubblewrap: pat-aur need bubblewrap with overlayfs support, you will have to use bubblewrap-overlayfs for the moment.
• Providers needs to be mapped manually in target config. This is a design decision that make developing pat-aur much simpler and I also think it's better overall to know exactly what is going to be used by configuring it manually.
• Containers are unprivileged, meaning they do not require root access. I haven't run into any issues so far but it's not impossible.

By default with a little bit of configuration, it should work fine for the typical use case of simply building and installing packages for your own x86_64 machine. For more advanced use cases, read the readme, the manual and the example config files. In any cases, read the setup section of the readme for a quick setup.

I think it is developed enough to be used by other people at this stage and I could use testers and some feedback.

I have a couple of packages that every time I do a full system upgrade, they upgrade to the latest commit instead of the latest release (e.g. Zotero). Is there any way to tell my AUR helper (in this case yay) to skip this and only consider releases for upgrading? TY.

Want to try my hand at making an AUR helper for my own experience, and I want to avoid what's happened with pamac before. From my understanding though, their issue last time I paid attention to it was refreshing search results on every keypress.

My current idea is to pull the packages.gz when opening, use that package list for search suggestions if I eventually get to making a search setup, and on a scrollable list of packages, pull the info from rpc as/just before each item is scrolled into view. When I think through that sort of setup, it feels like a lot of requests. Is it actually a reasonable amount?

I recently started using Spicetify in conjunction with Spotify. After updating the Spotify package you are required to run some Spicetify commands in order to make everything work again. I searched the internet for a hook to take care of these commands when the Spotify package updates but surprisingly couldn't find one, so I decided to write one myself and share it here with you all. Be sure to swap out my username "asuka" with your username.

# Force an upgrade of spicetify when spotify has an update
[Trigger]
Operation = Install
Operation = Upgrade
Operation = Remove
Type = Package
Target = spotify

[Action]
Description = Updating spicetify...
Depends = spicetify-cli
When = PostTransaction
Exec = /bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/chmod a+wr /opt/spotify && /usr/bin/chmod a+wr /opt/spotify/Apps -R && /usr/bin/sudo -u asuka /usr/bin/spicetify update && /usr/bin/sudo -u asuka /usr/bin/spicetify backup apply'

Happy listening!

Are there too many already? Maybe? But I made this for fun so check it out if you want:

Repo: https://github.com/Morganamilo/paru

AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/paru/

Hey!

It has come to my attention, especially lately, when observing multiple threads, people talk of aurman, pacaur etc. so much confusion :D can you give me 1 solid reason to stop using yaourt?

What is the "BEST" "BiS" aur helper which all the coolkids use in 2018? So when I change it, I want to settle with the best aur helper for another 3 years :D!

I want to take another step further in my Arch journey. So I think it is time for me to make the change, and try something new! I just want the new aur helper to be as good as yaourt xD (or better?). I haven't looked further than yaourt to know more.

Yaourt was the first aur helper I learned to use, after first installing Arch Linux 3 years ago!

The thing is, I haven't really never edited PKGBUILD file. So usually I just press "Yes, Yes, Next, Next, Install" ... not like I edit anything during the install. But I promise, I will also take a look into this to finally understand why people edit PKGBUIILDS and have the breakthrough in that!

Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks for all the suggestions /r/archlinux users :D I have chosen yay as many people seem to be happy with using it, so it seems like a good choice based on that.

Choo-choo get on the yay-train!

Hello, I am trying to make my own archiso "distro" and I want to add yay to the live ISO, how can I do it if it's not in the official repo? Thanks

I've realized that there are too many packages in the AUR that I prefer to use. This has caused me some extra work downloading and installing, etc.

I'm planning to clean up my system, regarding dependencies, orphaned packages, and the like.

Once I've clean up my system, I'll install an AUR helper going forward.

I'm looking for recommendations from the community base on my requires, or "nice to have features"

I've check the page at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AUR_helpers though I'm looking for some input from Human experience.

I'd like to have something that can search for available packages, Allow review of the PKGBUILD files prior to install, and that could handle dependencies. If there's a helper that can check private keys as well, this would be optimal.

What are your suggestions? Which AUR helpers/wrappers have you tried?

Are they reliable and predictable?

Thanks in Advance.

What is the most reliable AUR helper nowadays? Which one do you use? I'm aware of this list, but I'm interested more in your experience/opinions.

Thanks!

EDIT SOLVED (more or less)

Something is adding /bin to my $PATH, which causes cmake to fail (just like mentioned here). I don't know what is putting /bin in there, but that's another problem, probably worth a new post if searching the internet doesn't solve it.

Running PATH=[same-path-minus-'/bin'] makepkg -rsc results in a successful build.

Thanks for all your suggestions!

Hi! So I realize, one should always build their PKGBUILD's in a clean chroot... But, I'm a lazy man who usually uses an AUR helper to install AUR packages. Every once in a while I come across a package that fails to build outside of a clean chroot, but I don't always understand why.

Right now, when I try to build the package for gwenview, my build fails:

[~/gwenview-clean] $ ls
PKGBUILD
[~/gwenview-clean] $ makepkg -risc
==> Making package: gwenview 23.08.4-3 (wo 17 jan 2024 16:28:23 CET)
==> Checking runtime dependencies...
==> Installing missing dependencies...
[... cmake starts configuring ...]
-- Configuring done (1.8s)
CMake Error in lib/CMakeLists.txt:
  Imported target "kImageAnnotator::kImageAnnotator" includes non-existent
  path

    "/include/kImageAnnotator-Qt5"

  in its INTERFACE_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES.  Possible reasons include:

  * The path was deleted, renamed, or moved to another location.

  * An install or uninstall procedure did not complete successfully.

  * The installation package was faulty and references files it does not
  provide.
[... above error repeated 3 times ...]
-- Generating done (0.1s)
CMake Generate step failed.  Build files cannot be regenerated correctly.
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
    Aborting...

But, when I build in a clean chroot as per the instructions on the wiki:

[~/gwenview-clean] $ mkdir ~/chroot
[~/gwenview-clean] $ CHROOT=$HOME/chroot
[~/gwenview-clean] $ mkarchroot -C /etc/pacman.conf -M /etc/makepkg.conf $CHROOT/root base-devel
[~/gwenview-clean] $ arch-nspawn $CHROOT/root pacman -Syu

The package builds just fine. I've purposely used my own pacman.conf and makepkg.conf, so they shouldn't be the issue. I've also created a list of all packages installed in the chroot, and I have them all installed on my system as well. So some other configuration file may be at play?

Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be, or how to find out were the difference comes from?

Thanks!

NOTE As of writing there is a bug in gwenview's PKGBUILD that prevents it from building no matter what method you use (it has 'unstable' in the URl of the pkgsrc, instead of 'stable'), but I had fixed that locally already. This was fixed already

I've been using arch for about a year. I like it a lot, but I have some big serious gaps in my knowledge that the wiki doesn't answer, and I'm not sure where to learn this. The problem is that the wiki for pacman/AUR, the man pages, and other webpages all seem to be in the form of either specific instructions. For example, "if you want to remove a package and its dependencies, pacman -Rs package_name" But I haven't found anything that describes how pacman works. So I have a lot of questions that I don't know how to investigate:

• What exactly is a package? I know it has executables and/or libraries, but it obviously comes with some metadata, like the version, list of dependencies, etc, and where is that metadata stored?
• I think the package database (pacman -Q) describes packages I have installed on my computer. But I don't know the difference between the package database and the files database. And what exactly is the sync database (-S)? Is it on my computer or on the internet somewhere?
• What is this stuff in ~/yay/cache/? What will happen if I delete it?
• What does it mean when yay asks Packages to cleanBuild?
• What happens when an compilation/installation operation is aborted partway through?

To be clear, I'm not exactly looking for answers to these questions, because more questions like them will probably keep coming up. How do you learn stuff like this? Just messing around with pacman and seeing what happens? Did you read something good? Did you have to read the source code?

Thanks for any help!

This effects both Yay and Paru. My theory as to why this occurred is I rm -r the Paru folder and said yes to removing protected files (I know. I'm an idiot).

I used a live USB (Arch Install) and ran mount /dev/sdä3 /mnt pacman --sysroot /mnt` ||a swapped so that an uninformed doesn't just copy and paste||

I also arch-chroot'd yay -Rns yay & paru - Rns paru

Rebooted and reinstalled both manually only for the problem to persist ~ Forgive me, but I can't entirely remember why, but I think my removal of the protected file broke something involving go. That could be 100% wrong, especially since I can't even remember why I think that ~ This post from some time ago seems to have someone experiencing the same issue: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/aur-helper-paru-hangs-with-end/106876

Doesn't seem to be a solution to the problem in that thread, but it is where I learned pressing Q will mitigate the issue

I'm trying to map AUR to PPA in my head. For eg: This is the way to add a new repository in debian.

echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg] https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.28/deb/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list

In archlinux, you need an AUR helper like yay. But I stumbled upon this wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unofficial_user_repositories which makes me believe I could add new repositories in the same fashion as above (debian), enabling pacman to pull PKGBUILDs from these repos and build from source ...etc.

If not, what exactly is the difference between the "Unofficial user repositories" listed in the above wiki and AUR ? Sort of apparent that these "Unofficial user repositories" mostly store prebuilt binaries/packages for AUR.

What exactly stops pacman from pulling PKGBUILDs from AUR ?

So I've been playing around with paru lately and I'm really enjoying it. It's basically just pacman but it uses AUR packages/repos. Alot of the commands are the same as well such as paru -Syu to update all AUR packages. I strongly recommend you guys give it a shot if you haven't.

..and how a perfect AUR helper should look like (IMO).

• It shouldn't require escalated privileges until it explicitly needs them. If it needs to do something with su/sudo it should inform user what command would be executed and drop escalated privileges after that (sudo -k).
  • Most of the common AUR helpers (what a shame!) rely on thing so-called "sudo loop". The idea is that AUR helper calls some simple sudo command in background, time by time, preventing sudo_timeout to be expired and not to ask a password again. What does this really mean? If your PKGBUILD has any sudo command — it will be executed as root. Real root. Also, if there's a sudo command somewhere in the sources (for example, in a ./configure script) it will be executed as real root too. Even saving plain-text root password in an env-variable is more secure than this shit.
  • Want to test this? Just add something like "sudo touch /I.Pwn3d.YoU" in any section, build(), for example, of your PKGBUILD and see what happens. You can try something more complex, like editing autoconf.sh with sed, but the result remains the same. You just need to enter a password to install make-depends — and here it goes.
• It should remains operational with or without sudo, and together with various sudo settings like "Defaults timestamp_timeout=0".
  • I use mentioned setting to overcome the case described above. And surprise: only few unpopular helpers like trizen and pkgbuilder support this mode.
• It should (optionally) support some kind of isolated build.
  • aurutils helper uses systemd-nspawn, pikaur uses systemd dynamic users, even plain chroot can be used with some restrictions.
• It should be written in common and safe language. Not in bash.
  • Really, don't read BashFAQ before going to bed. Don't repeat my mistakes. Or learn it by heart and use a shellcheck.
• It shouldn't depend on any of the AUR packages. Just on core/, community/ and extra/.

Some thoughts about available helpers: I've tried some of them and that's what I think:

• aurutils — bash/c — its main concept is repository based, which makes it slightly different from anything below and bringing it even closer to debian's pbuilder when using --chroot option (makes the build process run in a separate namespace using mkarchroot). It can't operate as a pacman front-end, it builds packages and creates a local repository letting everything else to pacman. It can build packages in a separate namespace using mkarchroot (devtools). Unfortunately, it has lack of documentation and internal man-pages couldn't explain how it really works. Fortunately, I've found this, this and this.
• bauerbill — python — too many deps installed from AUR: 8 (eight!!!). If I want to build and install packages myself I definitely wouldn't need the AUR helper. Didn't even try it.
• pacaur — bash/c — most old yaourt-like. Seems quite usable, but relies on sudo timestamp. Seriously, look at this shit and trace it (SudoV).
• pakku — nim — can you name any software written in nim? I can't, but the language itself seems fun.
• pikaur — python — uses systemd dymamic users to build a package, but asks for elevated privileges before it really needs them. Also I don't like the code. It is too complicated. And no comments — in all senses.
• pkgbuilder — python — lacks some interactive features, but the code seems rather good to me.
• trizen — perl — the code is nice and readable. It makes my inner Demian Conway happy, despite that perl is pining for the fjords. Seems usable.
• yay — go — requires a huge go-runtime to build, but can be installed as pre-compiled binary (yay-bin). Has special --nosudoloop option. Imports some 3rd party modules directly from github during the build process. This is a normal practice for go-lang, but not for a tool that runs with elevated privileges and interacts with your package manager. So, no. Just no!

P.S. Sorry if I offended anyone, but I had to speak out. I would appreciate any thoughts on this topic. Also English is not my native language, so don't blame me hard.