[Solved] some pointers on using AUR?

arch_nemesis · 2011-07-13 12:28:55

It's been about 2 years since I was an Arch user, and I've probably got about 6 months under my belt from during that time. I didn't leave in a huff or anything, just wanted to continue exploring other options. (was about 1.5 years into my time with LInux then)

So as of yesterday I'm back, and happy to be here! The install went really well except for about 30 min that I spent wondering why why the system couldn't find dhcpd - before I realized the command was dhcpcd. ;-)

I've got GNOME3 running, and as I'm sitting down to tweak some things and get various stuff installed I'm remembering that I'm going to end up using AUR quite a bit.

This is where my confusion comes in.

I *think* I was using yaourt for handling my aur installs back then, and cruising around I don't see any other aur helper being mentioned often, so it seems that's the the prevailing choice.

However, from the Wiki page for Yaourt there is this:

You can update your system including AUR packages with: yaourt -Syua

Followed by a warning about building as root (noted) which recommends this method which seems to imply that these commands will need to be run for *each* package from AUR that has been updated.

$ yaourt -Sb <package>
$ su
# pacman -U <package file>

And of course there is this further warning about using the "easy" way for updating with yaourt --

Please bear in mind that yaourt does not presently deal with package replacement. Using it to update the system is not recommended.

So this leads me to believe that I've got some misunderstanding someplace.

Because if this is how it will work I am wondering about the following --

a) isn't it awfully tedious if there are (potentially) 50 AUR updates that day to enter the the yaourt and pacman commands individually for each of those 50 packages? I have to be misunderstanding the recommendations here.
b) I assume that when I get around to looking at graphical package management tools, there is one that will show me the list of updated packages in AUR that I need to manually update as noted above?

I don't even necessarily have a big problem with all this, but for some reason remember that using AUR was pretty seamless, and felt not dissimilar to using the official repositories -- this doesn't jive with that (possibly flawed) recollection.

Also, in browsing this section of the forum, I noticed fakeroot and sudo being asked about as immediate solutions to a couple of different yaourt problems -- are these requirements to using yaourt effectively? So far I have chosen to install neither.

Thanks, and I have attempted to answer these questions myself, so apologies if there are obvious answers I have missed.

Last edited by arch_nemesis (2011-07-15 13:50:18)

karol · 2011-07-13 13:49:48

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Aur_helpers - there are other AUR helpers too.

I think package replacements != version changes: when package foo gets replaced by package bar yaourt may be confused (I've never really used yaourt, I'm guessing here). You should use pacman to handle the repos first and yaourt to work with AUR.

Last edited by karol (2011-07-13 13:50:46)

arch_nemesis · 2011-07-13 13:54:07

karol wrote:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Aur_helpers - there are other AUR helpers too.
I think package replacements != version changes: when package foo gets replaced by package bar yaourt may be confused (I've never really used yaourt, I'm guessing here). You should use pacman to handle the repos first and yaourt to work with AUR.

Ah (smacks head) I see your point regarding replacement vs version changes. That does eliminate a lot of concerns.

I did see that there were other AUR helpers, but with a list that long I'd think one or two would emerge as the most commonly chosen option (and didn't see a way to easily differentiate them based on people's experiences with them other than to see what was being discussed most often here...)

You mention that you don't use yaourt. Do you do AUR installs manually, or use a different helper?

For now I think I'll just proceed (carefully) with yaourt unless you (or someone) strongly suggests some other alternative.

Thanks!

Last edited by arch_nemesis (2011-07-13 13:55:51)

karol · 2011-07-13 14:02:07

I ofter manually download the tAURball and run makepkg. For regular updates I use clyde http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=34686

arch_nemesis · 2011-07-15 13:51:12

After a bit of playing around I see that I was clearly overcomplicating the situation -- easy peasy using yaourt so far.

Thanks karol!

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-13 12:28:55

[Solved] some pointers on using AUR?

#2 2011-07-13 13:49:48

Re: [Solved] some pointers on using AUR?

#3 2011-07-13 13:54:07

Re: [Solved] some pointers on using AUR?

#4 2011-07-13 14:02:07

Re: [Solved] some pointers on using AUR?

#5 2011-07-15 13:51:12

Re: [Solved] some pointers on using AUR?

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