AUR package maintenance

fistrosan · 2020-09-03 10:48:21

Hi guys,

Oftentimes I read in the forum that AUR packages are our responsibility to maintain. I was wondering what is the best way to do this. Recently I updated my system with pacman and it complained about some perl stuff. When I looked into it I saw that it was an AUR package named per-term-shellui that I had in my system. Never before I had problems with it. I went ahead, I reinstalled it and now everything seems fine.

So my question is: is this how packages from the AUR are maintained ? Wait for pacman to warn you that something is wrong with it and then reinstall it (assuming the new version from the AUR is compatible with the latest pacman updates?).

I have been trying to look for this in the wiki, but all I could find is about "how to install from the AUR" ... yes yes I know how to do that, now I want to maintain them ... the right way of course. Any advice ?

Thanks !

schard · 2020-09-03 12:41:19

What it means is that the Arch Linux devs and TUs are not responsible for AUR content.
It's the resposiblility of the submitter / maintainer to keep the package up-to-date and working.
It's up to the user (you) to update it when necessary as it was in your case.

I myself used AUR helpers in my early days of using Arch, but I have migrated to my own repository some time ago.
For me, it's easier to manage all packages in a centralized repo and keep them up-to-date there.
This way I don't need to worry about AUR packages on my computers and can always just pacman -Syu.

Last edited by schard (2020-09-03 12:41:54)

porcelain1 · 2020-09-03 13:12:01

I have a directory on my home simply called aur, with all AUR packages of my interest. Since all of them are git-versioned, when I upgrade my system I run later a script I made that enters on each repository and pulls the latest changes of each AUR package. Of course that most of time they are "Already up to date.", but if anything changes, then I run makepkg again to upgrade it. Yes, it is kind of manual work, but it only takes a few seconds every once in a while. This is the way I do the maintenance

Just notice that the convention is that packages ending with -git are automatically updated to latest version when running makepkg, as in
Arch User Repository#What is the difference between foo and foo-git packages?.

The script, if of any interest:

for i in *; do echo "$i"; cd "$i"; git pull; cd ..; done

7etc/ · 2020-09-04 19:19:44

Enabling notifications for the selected package helps keep it up to date. Usually informs you about new updates, other users problems..

fistrosan · 2020-09-04 19:25:44

7etc/: that sounds like a very good idea ... how do I get those notifications ? mailing-list ?

Trilby · 2020-09-04 19:35:04

A fair portion of the time the problem (referred to in the first post) really has nothing to do with AUR packages having updates available. In fact, quite often an AUR package can have updates available and you'd be just fine waiting a while before updating it.

The more common problem is when AUR packages need to be rebuilt (even with the same upstream version) to link against updated libraries.

AUR notifications will not address this, nor will the script that loops through local git repositories checking for updates. I opt for a much more "pythonic" approach: rather than testing for every possible outcome before hand then going ahead with an update or other usage of my system only if every test passes, I take a "try: ... except:" approach. I just update and use my system as I'd like. If / when and AUR package stops working, I update and/or rebuild it. It's much simpler and easier.

Although I do not have any AUR packages that replace main repo packages. If you have some AUR version of a core system library or tool, you'd likely want to be much more proactive.

d_fajardo · 2020-09-04 20:37:38

fistrosan wrote:

how do I get those notifications ? mailing-list ?

If you use conky, Xyne's paconky gives excellent notification of AUR and system updates.
Nevertheless, as Trilby mentioned, some AUR packages stop working but don't necessarily need an update but a rebuild against newer system libraries, and it's often not clear when these things happen. One just finds out when the AUR package stops working.

Last edited by d_fajardo (2020-09-04 20:38:08)

7etc/ · 2020-09-05 01:15:12

fistrosan: Enter the AUR section. When you search for a package and look at it in detail, you will see to your right "download snapshot, vote for this package, enable notifications ... etc. First you need to register and log in to AUR.

Last edited by 7etc/ (2020-09-05 12:25:50)

Arch Linux

#1 2020-09-03 10:48:21

AUR package maintenance

#2 2020-09-03 12:41:19

Re: AUR package maintenance

#3 2020-09-03 13:12:01

Re: AUR package maintenance

#4 2020-09-04 19:19:44

Re: AUR package maintenance

#5 2020-09-04 19:25:44

Re: AUR package maintenance

#6 2020-09-04 19:35:04

Re: AUR package maintenance

#7 2020-09-04 20:37:38

Re: AUR package maintenance

#8 2020-09-05 01:15:12

Re: AUR package maintenance

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