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#1 2011-07-22 15:23:01

psoulos
Member
Registered: 2011-07-22
Posts: 2

What is the purpose of AUR?

Hey, I just installed Arch for the first time yesterday and am loving it.

Quick question about AUR, what exactly is the point? Why not get the package directly from whoever wrote it? Are the packages in AUR configured specially to run on Arch?

For example, why would I download the android sdk from AUR as opposed to directly from Google?

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#2 2011-07-22 15:26:31

graysky
Wiki Maintainer
From: :wq
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 10,595
Website

Re: What is the purpose of AUR?

Welcome newbie.  One of the cornerstones of Arch is pacman for package management.  My advice is that you don't install ANYTHING from a websource without doing it through pacman.  Browse to the wiki and read about the AUR, pacman, and the Arch Way.


CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck  • AUR packagesZsh and other configs

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#3 2011-07-22 15:29:18

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: What is the purpose of AUR?

pacman gives you dependency resolution.Often it's not enough to install package A, you also need to install packages B and C, because A depends on them. Pacman (or an AUR helper) will do that for you. The same goes for uninstalling.

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#4 2011-07-22 15:29:25

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: What is the purpose of AUR?

please search the wiki for AUR to get a better understanding of what it is and how it should be used.

and welcome to Arch and the forums


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There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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#5 2011-07-22 15:38:09

psoulos
Member
Registered: 2011-07-22
Posts: 2

Re: What is the purpose of AUR?

graysky wrote:

Welcome newbie.  One of the cornerstones of Arch is pacman for package management.  My advice is that you don't install ANYTHING from a websource without doing it through pacman.  Browse to the wiki and read about the AUR, pacman, and the Arch Way.

Isn't pacman just a package manager? Couldn't you download the package and install it locally, using pacman?

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#6 2011-07-22 15:39:07

litemotiv
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2008-08-01
Posts: 5,026

Re: What is the purpose of AUR?

psoulos wrote:

Isn't pacman just a package manager? Couldn't you download the package and install it locally, using pacman?

If you have a package that Pacman recognizes, yes you can. Otherwise you will have to create a package yourself from the downloaded source.


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#7 2011-07-22 15:40:25

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: What is the purpose of AUR?

psoulos wrote:
graysky wrote:

Welcome newbie.  One of the cornerstones of Arch is pacman for package management.  My advice is that you don't install ANYTHING from a websource without doing it through pacman.  Browse to the wiki and read about the AUR, pacman, and the Arch Way.

Isn't pacman just a package manager? Couldn't you download the package and install it locally, using pacman?

Pacman needs to have some idea about the package. AUR provides PKGBUILD which tells makepkg what to build and install.
Pacman can manage only Arch packages not source archives / .run binaries.

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#8 2011-07-22 15:51:18

graysky
Wiki Maintainer
From: :wq
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 10,595
Website

Re: What is the purpose of AUR?

PKGBUILD = script file used to tell makepkg what to do to build an Arch package
makepkg = package building script which reads the PKGBUILD to make packages
pacman = package manager to install, remove, manage deps, search, etc. packages both in official/unofficial repos and based on ones you wish to build from the AUR

The syntax of a PKGBUILD is a series of bash commands.  The AUR holds (as of today) 30,859 PKGBUILDs/related files for many MANY different pieces of software.


CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck  • AUR packagesZsh and other configs

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#9 2011-07-22 15:55:23

Awebb
Member
Registered: 2010-05-06
Posts: 6,272

Re: What is the purpose of AUR?

The AUR does not host the sourcecode to anything. Look at some PKGBUILD files, they usually (if not almost always) fetch the tarball from the author's web presence. It basically does, what you propose.

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#10 2011-07-23 06:19:16

admiralspark
Member
From: Alaska, USA
Registered: 2011-01-07
Posts: 87

Re: What is the purpose of AUR?

The biggest difference:
Pulling PKGBUILD from the AUR will let you compile a package from source, whereas the main arch repositories have precompiled packages. If you try to install, say, Banshee from it's website you will only find packages for distros like Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora etc. These wont work with Arch.
The AUR lets the community have a central place to pull the needed information to build MANY programs with a single command, and not just be limited to the 4k packages in the official repos.

Ha ha...limited to 4000 software packages. I love linux.


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