Pacaur
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Pacaur is an Arch User Repository (AUR) helper aiming at speed and simplicity, designed to minimize user prompt interaction and to use an uncluttered interface. It is written in Bash and built upon the well designed cower and expac C backends.
Contents
Philosophy
Pacaur main feature revolves around a fast workflow idea, that is, spending as less time as possible interacting with package management prompts. The objectives of speed, simplicity and uncluttered interface were also taken into consideration.
Pacaur is:
Fast
- It minimizes user interaction.
- It has very good performance with minimal memory footprint.
- It retrieve and edit all PKGBUILDs, check and solve all conflicts before building anything.
Simple
- It does not add lot of features, but simply extends pacman to manage the AUR.
- It does not reinvent the wheel, but is built upon existing tools (cower, expac, sudo, pacman-color).
- It is a small bash script using tiny C libraries.
- It is based on libalpm C interface directly maintained by a pacman developer.
Powerful
- It can be used as a separate AUR frontend, or a single tool to manage official and AUR packages.
- Its search function provides regex support (through cower).
- It provides binary and AUR package names completion.
- It passes arguments to pacman when appropriate.
- It shows current and available version when checking update.
Secure
- It does not source the PKGBUILDs unecessarily.
- It detects and warns about possible malicious sudo code in the PKGBUILDs.
- It disposes of an additional full secured mode for paranoïde people.
Installation
The following binary dependencies need to be installed:
You can then install cowerAUR as a dependency, and then pacaurAUR itself. Both those packages are available from the AUR. You will have to install them with the official method for installing unsupported packages.
The package pacman-colorAUR is optional but highly recommended for adding color output support.
Usage
Invoking pacaur consists of supplying an operation, any applicable options, and usually one or more targets.
usage: pacaur <operation> [options] [package(s)] operations: pacman extension -S, -Q extend pacman operations to the AUR AUR only -s, --search search AUR repository for matching strings -i, --info view package information -- pass twice for details -d, --download download target(s) -- pass twice to download AUR dependencies -m, --makepkg download and make target(s) -y, --sync download, make and install target(s) -k, --check check for AUR update(s) -u, --update update AUR package(s) general -v, --version display version information -h, --help display help information --fixbackend quickly rebuild backend options: pacman extension - can be used with the -S, -Ss, -Si, -Sii, -Sw, -Su, -Qu, -Sc, -Scc operations -a, --aur only search, install or clean packages from the AUR -r, --repo only search, install or clean packages from the repositories general -e, --edit edit target PKGBUILD -- can be combined with the -d, -m, -y, -u flags -c, --clean clean target(s) build files -- can be combined with the -m, -y, -u flags -q, --quiet show less information for query and search --devel consider AUR development packages upgrade --ignore ignore a package upgrade (can be used more than once) --noconfirm do not prompt for any confirmation --noedit do not prompt to edit files --rebuild always rebuild package
Userbase target
Two types of users are in mind:
- those who prefer to have one single tool to manage AUR and official repositories,
- those who prefer to keep their AUR frontend separate from Pacman.
As such there are two sets of commands:
- commands that wrap the pacman binary (-S, -Ss, -Si, -Sw. -Su, -Qu, -Sc) and extend its functions to the AUR. This behavior can be disabled with the fallback variable in the config file.
- commands that are AUR specific (-s, -i, -m, -y, -k, -u).
Example
pacaur -Ss package will search the repo, then the AUR if necessary (fallback enabled).
$ pacaur -Ss expac community/expac 1-2 pacman database extraction utility aur/expac-git 20110324-1 (24) pacman database extraction utility
pacaur -Ss package will be restricted to searching in the repo only, while pacaur -Ssa package will search the AUR (fallback disabled).
$ pacaur -Ss expac community/expac 1-2 pacman database extraction utility
$ pacaur -Ssa expac aur/expac-git 20110324-1 (24) pacman database extraction utility
pacaur -s package will search the AUR only.
$ pacaur -s expac aur/expac-git 20110324-1 (24) pacman database extraction utility
Configuration
Here are the available options in the config file:
# # /etc/xdg/pacaur/config # # The following options are commented out with their default values listed. # If you wish to use different values, uncomment and update the values. #builddir="${BUILDDIR:-$tmpdir}" # build directory #editor="${EDITOR:-vi}" # PKGBUILD editor #editpkgbuild=true # edit PKGBUILD script #editinstall=true # edit install script #fallback=true # pacman fallback to the AUR #clean=true # clean up after package install #cleandevel=true # clean up devel package #color=false # color support via pacman-color #secure=false # enhanced security
See also man pacaur.
Config files
Pacaur fully honors pacman and makepkg configuration files, as well as the sudoers and cower config file (if existing).
Environment variables
Note that pacaur fully honors pacman and makepkg environment variables ($BUILDDIR
, $PKGDEST
, $PACMAN
, ...).
Sudo configuration
Pacaur is designed to be used with sudo for minimal password prompting and your /etc/sudoers
should be configured accordingly.
To avoid password prompt timeout (typically if you went grabbing a coffee while waiting the build to finish), disable it in your sudoers:
Defaults passwd_timeout=0
Troubleshooting
Host name error
When checking AUR packages for updates, pacaur outputs a lot of "Couldn't resolve host name" and "Timeout was reached" messages in spite of the internet line working correctly.
- Configure your DNS server to improve queries speed. Try using Google primary DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4).
- Alternatively, tweak cower's config file to decrease the number of threads used in "MaxThread" variable.
Pacman upgrade
When upgrading pacman to a newer version, pacman fails due to dependency conflicts with an older version of cower or pacaur. In pacman.conf, try adding them to the SyncFirst variable:
SyncFirst = pacman cower pacaur
Using gvim as editor
When using gvim as editor, gvim opens but the build continues. In pacaur.conf, try:
editor="gvim --nofork"