Talk:AUR helpers

Is pacaur^AUR still active?

pacaur^AUR is now a forked version and the new forked version hasn't been updated for more than a year. The author is not responding to issues and pull requests any more. Shall we add a friendly notice about this? Simonmysun (talk) 02:39, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

There's a commit from 11 days ago. [1] -- Alad (talk) 09:13, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

It seems the project has indeed stalled. However, there were previous attempts to mark "old" helpers in the table. The response of helper authors was then to add trivial tags (like version bumps) to their project, simulating activity. As such, as long as the project is in AUR and still working, it seems best to leave this for users to decide. -- Alad (talk) 15:53, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I will close this since the majority of AUR helpers, whether listed or unlisted on this page, are inactive. There's nothing that really can be done about this and with a stable AUR and makepkg API, these projects should keep working nonetheless. (AUR is not entirely stable, such as the removal of the .php endpoint and addition of new fields to the REST output. But when it breaks a helper ith no fix merged in due time, there's no reason to keep the helper published on AUR either.) -- Alad (talk) 03:32, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Add table column for AUR helpers#Pacman wrappers

We have a note right above the table, would it not be better to create a new column for the information it contains? --Erus Iluvatar (talk) 08:26, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

The article went back and forth on this, the main issue being to define "batch operations" in the first place. This term was originally introduced by pacaur^AUR and comes down to 1. guessing which packages need to be replaced beforehand 2. using pacman --ask (undocumented feature) to invert pacman --noconfirm prompts from N to Y during the build process.

Making this a column with Yes/No implies this is a desirable feature. I argue that depending on undocumented features with a bug-prone implementation (what if the wrong package is replaced on the user's system?) can not be classified as such. Furthermore, it gives the impression this somehow leads to less interaction on the user's behalf, which is false (in fact, the vast majority of pacman wrappers play a game of whack-a-mole with y/N prompts). A Note is more neutral, and leaves out whether a feature is wanted or not in the middle.

In any case, the other columns, Shell completion excepted, are better suited as basic requirements for a reliable AUR helper. And as far as basic requirements go, they are relatively simple to implement for AUR helper authors looking at this article - unlike a "batch operation" mechanism. -- Alad (talk) 15:47, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you ! I better understand now the reason why this is not already done. --Erus Iluvatar (talk) 16:26, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

baph

This was added to the page, claiming a reliable solver, split package support and a reliable parser. baph^AUR however appears to have none of those and thus not warrant an inclusion in AUR helpers.

In addition, file review is only done for the PKGBUILD, leaving out .install and other files. (The gpg recieve functionality also uses pacman-key...) Pasting the entry here in case it might change in the future.

edit: the build function seems to call get, and vice-versa. So the solver seems recursive. Whether it actually works on packages with more than 1 level of dependencies remains to be seen. -- Alad (talk) 03:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Apologies, I'm still quite new to the ArchWiki. In my eagerness to contribute, I wasn't thorough enough, and I accidentally overlooked the note at the beginning of the article. Liassica (talk) 04:42, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Name	Written in	File review	Diff view	Git clone	Reliable parser	Reliable solver	Split packages	Shell completion	Specificity
baphAUR	Bash	Partial	No	Yes	No	?	No	–	–

Alad (talk) 02:36, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Auxiliary files for File review

Auxiliary files in an AUR repository also lead to arbitrary code execution, namely .install files which are run by pacman as root. As such it makes sense for the file review column to include them. For a helper that only supports viewing the PKGBUILD, I suggest a Partial entry (after all, when noticing there is an .install file, the user can manually view it with some effort). -- Alad (talk) Alad (talk) 03:10, 8 October 2023 (UTC)