Concerns about migrating to Arch

mrpringle · 2009-07-12 00:10:22

Hi,
I've been using gentoo for years and I was thinking of giving arch a go - not because I'm unhappy with gentoo, but because I would be interested to see how performance and speed compare between the distros.

Anyway. While I was backing up up my disk over the network I was having a look at the arch website and checked the list of official packages (installable via pacman). I was surprised to see a few of my commonly used ports (under gentoo) were not installable via pacman; exaile, latexsuite, vimpython, pylibpcap and ufo alien invasion.

I understand that most of these are available through the AUR using abs, but I was surprised to see that anyone can sign in and submit tarballs. Under gentoo all the ports are maintained by the developers so I would say it is less likely that malicious code is placed in the tree. Does the abs tree get compromised often, or am I just being over cautious.

Another thing which kind of surprised me was the lack of in-built ability to keep track of packages installed via makepkg/abs. If I install a port in the abs tree then I have to manually go through the same procedure of copying the folder in the abs tree to my home dir and running makepkg. Why can't makepkg just use a temp directory which I can remove after the package has been installed.

In fact is there any reason I need to keep the built packages? I imagine these could take up a fair bit of hard disk space after a while. In gentoo I can just clear my distfiles directory periodically. Is there any downfall to doing this in arch?

Last edited by mrpringle (2009-07-12 00:21:09)

Daenyth · 2009-07-12 00:13:47

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Dusty · 2009-07-12 00:18:08

I agree, Daenyth, but 'mrpringle' is actually a kind of cool screen name, I think we should try to entice him to stay. Thoughts?

Dusty

mrpringle · 2009-07-12 00:22:08

Ok. I've changed the title.

Sakurina · 2009-07-12 00:27:35

mrpringle wrote:

Another thing which kind of surprised me was the lack of in-built ability to keep track of packages installed via makepkg/abs. If I install a port in the abs tree then I have to manually go through the same procedure of copying the folder in the abs tree to my home dir and running makepkg. Why can't makepkg just use a temp directory which I can remove after the package has been installed.

yaourt lets you build AUR packages just as easily as you can install packages through pacman; you don't have to use ABS.

In fact is there any reason I need to keep the built packages? I imagine these could take up a fair bit of hard disk space after a while. In gentoo I can just clear my distfiles directory periodically. Is there any downfall to doing this in arch?

You don't need to keep the built packages once they're installed.

skottish · 2009-07-12 00:37:51

Welcome to the forums mrpringle.

AUR and ABS have nothing to do with one another. ABS is the official build files from Arch's devs and trusted users. AUR is the Arch User Repository in which, as you mentioned, anyone can post anything. That's why I take a few seconds to check the source website, and read through any install files or scripts that come with the tarball.

As far as the rest goes, I highly recommend re-reading the information that you have, and taking a look at the pacman and makepkg man pages. The situation with using Arch is somewhat different than your initial impression.

Rumor · 2009-07-12 01:34:34

Hello mrpringle:
Exaile *is* available in the community repo and is therefore installable via pacman.

community/exaile 0.2.14-2
    A media player aiming to be similar to KDE's AmaroK, but for GTK+

Welcome to Arch, you'll find several current and former Gentoo users here in the Arch community.

As has been mentioned, you can use yaourt to install from the AUR, and a quick read of the PKGBUILD should allay any fears you may have.

lifeafter2am · 2009-07-12 01:45:22

mr. pringle,

How is the AUR any different than the huge plethora of overlays that are used quite commonly in Gentoo right now? You should always look though the code before running anything, especially before installing it. Even if you use yaourt it gives you the option to look through the package builds and stuff before anything happens. For that matter there is yaourt, which does allow for uninstalling and upgrading packages from the AUR.

I switched from Gentoo about a month ago now, and I have to say that I am impressed. So impressed that I actually installed Arch on my MacBook Pro, which I had absolutely no intention of doing before.

mrpringle · 2009-07-12 07:56:08

So to get this straight, does the AUR repo contain packages which are installable via pacman, and abs contains build scripts which fetch and build apps?

majiq · 2009-07-12 08:42:44

Not quite. The AUR is comprised, from my understanding, of two parts: supported and unsupported. the unsupported is Jane or John's package for some library, app, etc. that may or may not contain malicious code. The supported contains everything in the community repository. These are items that are so popular that they were moved from the unsupported to the supported, and are maintained by trusted users, such as Daenyth up there. Pacman can install community packages for you, and yaourt can install unsupported packages. That said, yaourt is in the unsupported subset, AFAIK, probably to force users to go through the manual install at least once. If you read the wiki on make packages with makepkg and the wiki about PKGBUILDs, that should be fairly enough to explain it all. I think it also explains how to keep track of self-made installs.

ABS contains all the files for a tweaked/manual install, usually just a PKGBUILD. I think the usefulness of ABS is in the case where you need to tweak the packages you install with pacman (i.e. enabling shared libraries, enabling debugging flags, etc.), you know where you started from/don't have to start from scratch. For the same purpose, I would suggest keeping your config files/PKGBUILDs once you're done installing your packages, but to each his or her own.

I would suggest at least trying Arch. It grows on you.

Rumor · 2009-07-12 12:44:10

mrpringle wrote:

So to get this straight, does the AUR repo contain packages which are installable via pacman, and abs contains build scripts which fetch and build apps?

Almost.

wiki wrote:

The Arch Linux User-Community Repository (AUR) is a community-driven repository of PKGBUILDS (no binaries) for Arch users. The AUR was initially conceived to organize the sharing of PKGBUILDs amongst the wider community and to expedite the inclusion of popular user-contributed packages into the community repo.

The ABS tree contains the PKGBUILD file for each of the "official" Arch packages. You can use it to tweak a particular package to your needs before installing, or for creating your own pacman installable package for some program that is not in the Arch repos or in the AUR.

The AUR contains user-created PKGBUILD files for packages that fall outside the "official" package set for Arch. These are shared so that others who might want to use that same program can easily install it using the PKGBUILD file you created.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-07-12 00:10:22

Concerns about migrating to Arch

#2 2009-07-12 00:13:47

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

#3 2009-07-12 00:18:08

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

#4 2009-07-12 00:22:08

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

#5 2009-07-12 00:27:35

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

#6 2009-07-12 00:37:51

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

#7 2009-07-12 01:34:34

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

#8 2009-07-12 01:45:22

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

#9 2009-07-12 07:56:08

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

#10 2009-07-12 08:42:44

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

#11 2009-07-12 12:44:10

Re: Concerns about migrating to Arch

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