Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

mfgann · 2010-03-16 15:23:25

I am a long time linux user, and recently (in the past few years) have been toying with Arch. Waiting for a good opportunity to make it my next main distro. I was a long-time gentoo user, and finally switched to ubuntu because the constant compiling was an annoyance, and what really aided the machine's speed most was the absence of all the unused little daemons/tools running that I didn't need. Hence my fascination with Arch. It truly seems the best of both worlds.

I am curious about one thing though, exemplified by yaourt. For as long as I've been using arch, the first recommendation I've seen when installing something, especially AUR related, is to install yaourt. I see references to it everywhere, and most all in a positive light. Now when I initially started using Arch I assumed either the functionality would be merged into pacman eventually, or that yaourt would go into the mainline and become the new front-end for a CLI package management. Now, more than a year later, I still see the same setup. It is almost a fractured looking package management. It worries me about a few things.. whether the Arch devs are against incorporating something that they did not develop themselves? Is there something wrong with using yaourt, and no one is warning anyone about it? Or do the devs not have enough time to keep up with things like these?

I worry because I also left gentoo about the time Daniel Robbins left it, and have seen it whither. I do not want to adopt a distro that is losing life, or is petering out. At the same time I do not enjoy ubuntu, and really hope these are minor factors.

FYI, I've been using linux since about '93, when I installed SLS linux. I'm not exactly a 'newbie' to linux so much as a 'newbie' to this distribution.

Allan · 2010-03-16 15:28:24

The reason yaourt's functionality is not added to pacman is that pacman aims to be distro independent and the AUR is purely and Arch construct. Also, no official support will be given to programs that pull and install packages from the AUR as the AUR packages are entirely unsupported officially.

As an aside, yaourt is kind of dead at the moment... You may want to look into other aur helpers (bowerbill and clyde are frontrunners at the moment - the wiki has more details).

Also, I do not see Arch petering out any time soon.

n0dix · 2010-03-16 15:42:57

Allan wrote:

[...] (bowerbill and clyde are frontrunners at the moment - the wiki has more details).[...]

You mean bauerbill.
Another great option is packer.

Last edited by n0dix (2010-03-16 15:43:44)

drcouzelis · 2010-03-16 15:58:22

I don't think you need to worry about Arch Linux losing life or petering anywhere. I don't have any proof of that, but judging by the activity of the developers and the strong community (and great color scheme!) Arch Linux will do just fine for quite some time.

I wonder if package maintenance for the developers is slightly easier for Arch Linux than many other distributions. It assume it helps that Arch Linux only uses one version of each package (the latest), applies almost no patches, and has big support for community packages. (the AUR) Even so, package maintenance must still be a huge task.

mfgann · 2010-03-16 20:28:45

Thanks, I'll take a look at the newer package manager scripts. Currently in a little X11/virtualbox configure nightmare (despite following the wiki and searching the forum). I can understand the reasoning for not making yaourt the main install script, given the details you all have mentioned, but I still do not see why it shouldn't be something easily installed by pacman? Perhaps I'm just more ignorant of the AUR repos. I'll rectify that shortly.

I'm glad to see quick responses. One of the things I liked the most about gentoo was the highly active forum. It really is what made the OS work well. It appears to be similar here.

Thanks again.

Surgat_ · 2010-03-16 20:52:08

Allan already answered your question:

Allan wrote:

Also, no official support will be given to programs that pull and install packages from the AUR as the AUR packages are entirely unsupported officially.

As yaourt installs packages from AUR and AUR is unsupported officially, no official support can be given to yaourt (so it can't be pulled into official repositories). Anyway, you need four commands insted of one to install yaourt, is that such a big deal?

Last edited by Surgat_ (2010-03-16 20:52:53)

Ghost1227 · 2010-03-16 21:00:29

Allan wrote:

(bowerbill and clyde are frontrunners at the moment - the wiki has more details)

Glad to see that clyde made the list

mfgann · 2010-03-16 21:09:11

No, it is not a big deal. It was a point of curiosity why something used and recommended by so many remained out of the default installation of the distribution. I understand the reasoning now. I never thought of pacman as being distro agnostic and the AUR as being arch-specific. I wanted to understand what it is that is being accomplished by keeping them separate, as they would have been merged long ago, had there not been a reason. So I asked a question on the forum, is that such a big deal?

fsckd · 2010-03-16 21:11:37

Repent ye sinners! The end is nigh! Fire and brimstone shall rain as the wrath of the devs falls upon thee! Repent!

tomk · 2010-03-16 21:28:38

All these glowing recommendations for yaourt should have been preceded by the more important suggestion that you familiarise yourself thoroughly with the AUR and the Arch Build System (ABS) first, so that you then understand what yaourt, and other aur helpers, are doing.

Unfortunately, this doesn't happen often enough. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen a noob in #archlinux ask about the AUR, and receive in response an immediate recommendation to use yaourt, with no warnings, qualifications, or disclaimers.

Also, despite its apparent popularity, there are many of us who have never used yaourt, and never will. It is very definitely optional, like all third-party add-ons.

mfgann · 2010-03-16 21:43:16

I agree. I installed it through what I assume is meant to be the typical AUR method. It was fairly trivial.
It feels a lot like ports/portage, though kept online. I can certainly see the use in a CLI tool to search the AUR repo, and download the needed files for a particular package. Then you're just a hop, skip, and a jump away from having it run pacman and makepkg as well, and the barrier between the two fades for a neophyte.

Out of curiousity (yes, the cat is dying), has there been any/much corrupted packages in AUR so far?

sonoran · 2010-03-16 22:11:17

mfgann wrote:

I do not want to adopt a distro that is losing life, or is petering out.

The total volume of traffic on the Arch forum might not reflect Arch's status as a "Top Ten" distro, but I suspect that is a tribute to the high quality and completeness of the documentation, which users are encouraged to consult before posting here. By following the Beginners' Guide and the Install Guide and consulting the Wiki to begin building their version of Arch, users learn that the answers to most questions can be found therein.

One of the most appealing features of Arch is that the documentation is an integral component, not an add-on or afterthought.

The extremely high signal to noise ratio on the forum mirrors the excellence of the documentation. I seldom leave here without having learned something useful.

tomk · 2010-03-17 00:03:55

mfgann wrote:

I can certainly see the use in a CLI tool to search the AUR repo, and download the needed files for a particular package.

One word: slurpy.

Wintervenom · 2010-03-17 00:25:25

I believe someone once explained to me that another reason the AUR is distanced off and an AUR helper will never find its way into the package repositories is to keep Arch out of legal hot water, since some items in the AUR are borderline-legal (or maybe even illegal depending on which country you are in).

Misfit138 · 2010-03-17 00:47:48

mfgann wrote:

Thanks, I'll take a look at the newer package manager scripts. Currently in a little X11/virtualbox configure nightmare (despite following the wiki and searching the forum). I can understand the reasoning for not making yaourt the main install script, given the details you all have mentioned, but I still do not see why it shouldn't be something easily installed by pacman? Perhaps I'm just more ignorant of the AUR repos. I'll rectify that shortly.

Yaourt is easily installed via pacman. You just need to add the yaourt repo to pacman.conf.

I must echo the others' sentiments, though. Yaourt seems unmaintained at this point, but packer/baurbill/clyde seem to be tearing shit up right now.

mfgann · 2010-03-17 14:08:41

@Wintervenom: Yeah, the legallity could be a very good explaination. It creates a lot of havok with nearly every distro.

@tomk and @misfit138: I'll definitely check out slurpy as well, as I like pacman just fine, but I can have some obscure tastes in packages (I'm an engineer, and sometimes want to play with some oddball math/circuit application). I've tried packer, bauerbill, and clyde. All seem pretty good, though all slightly different. I guess I don't go into the features deep enough to see the differences, or to know what is stale on yaourt (though I'll trust you all on that). Oh , and yes, I'd added yaourt via adding the extra repo before, but for whatever inane reason, my company has blocked archlinux.fr (I think they blocked all foreign websites by default.. gotta watch those evil frenchmen!).

Thanks for your thoughts everyone. I think it has cleared up some of the things I hadn't figured out. It was also definitely enlightening to see good forum activity, which to me is lifeblood of a distro like this. Looks like arch is going to stay my new favorite.

fsckd · 2010-03-17 16:13:55

Do you need an aur helper? I find it simple enough to do by hand.

Also, The end is nigh! Repent!

.:B:. · 2010-03-17 16:16:55

I use slurpy to pull in a single package, if I need something that requires a lot of extra dependencies (especially from the AUR), I use packer.

I should test aurget too, seems to be nice too. L'embarras du choix...

mfgann · 2010-03-18 15:52:43

I've kept a system up to date by source code before, including handling the dependencies myself. I am not a sysadmin by trade, and that is not what I am looking to do as a hobby. It was fun while I was learning Unix/Linux, but I'm not at that point right now. I want the convienience of dependency resolution, and the speed (of installing) of prebuilt binaries. I just do not like a system cluttered with garbage I don't want. So, I could do the AUR builds by hand, but that would just make me lazy in keeping some things up to date... which is the path to system insecurity. I truly liked gentoo, except that when I began running it several machines it became a lot more work, and something major, like KDE would update at the most inconvenient times (murphys law).

I like Arch's model very well, and think pacman works great. I just tend to pull in some odd packages from AUR at times. Not sure what I'll finally land on.. So far I think I like clyde the best of the batch, if only it hadn't been written in lua(jk!). But that may be because it works most like yaourt did.. colors, pulling in aur automatically, etc. Maybe I'll just go write my own It would be fun, and I haven't had a good mini project in a while.

brisbin33 · 2010-03-18 16:17:01

.:B:. wrote:

I should test aurget too, seems to be nice too.

woot! i finally got mentioned! i like to think aurget is as good (coding-wise) as packer, but it does not combine pacman/aur functions.

one tool, one job...

good luck on your helper search .

Arch Linux

#1 2010-03-16 15:23:25

Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#2 2010-03-16 15:28:24

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#3 2010-03-16 15:42:57

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#4 2010-03-16 15:58:22

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#5 2010-03-16 20:28:45

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#6 2010-03-16 20:52:08

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#7 2010-03-16 21:00:29

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#8 2010-03-16 21:09:11

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#9 2010-03-16 21:11:37

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#10 2010-03-16 21:28:38

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#11 2010-03-16 21:43:16

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#12 2010-03-16 22:11:17

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#13 2010-03-17 00:03:55

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#14 2010-03-17 00:25:25

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#15 2010-03-17 00:47:48

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

#16 2010-03-17 14:08:41

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#17 2010-03-17 16:13:55

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#18 2010-03-17 16:16:55

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#19 2010-03-18 15:52:43

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#20 2010-03-18 16:17:01

Re: Jumping through hoops to install yaourt, still...

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