Arch Linux

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

Hello folks.
Fist of all, thank you Spyhawk for pacaur, as it is my favourite AUR helper since bauerbill.
I'm experiencing what seems like an odd behaviour, though, and I'd like to know if this is a bug or a feature: when updating AUR packages with "pacaur -u" I don't get to edit any PKGBUILD or .install file, even if I have "editpkgbuild=true" and "editinstall=true" in my pacaur.conf file.
Note that if I use "pacaur -Syu" it asks me if I want to edit them one by one, while if I use "pacaur -e -u" I get to edit them without being prompted, which is the behaviour I was expecting.

I looked for this in this forum topic and in the git bugtracker, without finding anything about it. Please excuse me in case I missed something.

This is the intended behavior which is largely inspired by pbfetch. The later added "editpkgbuild" and "editinstall" options have meaning only when used with the pacman-like command sets (-S, -Sw and -Su). I probably should update the man page here, hehe :]

pacaur -y, -m, -u  -> install/make pkg/update pkg without editing
pacaur -ye, -me, -ue  -> install/make pkg/update pkg and edit PKGBUILD/.install files.

The idea here is to speed up workflow and don't edit when it is not required (for whatever your valid reason or craziness is). I might make these options working with the -y/-m/-u command set if that does not turn everything upside down.

Last edited by Spyhawk (2012-01-05 19:07:24)

donbex

Member

Registered: 2010-12-23

Posts: 53

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

Now it's clear. Thank you for the quick reply.

berz_

Member

Registered: 2011-06-12

Posts: 26

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

I started using pacaur and while I like it, I ran into three minor issues. These might be already solved (I am using pacman 3 and pacaur-legacy) or caused by a configuration error on my part.

1) autocompleting works only partially in bash:
completion of options always works with operations:  -, --, --i becomes --info, ...
completion of package names works with: --download, --info, -- makepkg, --sync
completion of package names does not work with: --update, --version, -d, -i, -m, -s, -u, -v, -y

2) I got an indicator of the previous command's exit status in my PS1 and noticed some odd exit codes.
command succeeds, but exit code is 1:

$ pacaur -k
:: gio-sharp-git 20111114-1 -> 20120109-1
:: gnome-shell-extension-mediaplayer-git 20111008-1 -> 20111105-1
:: gnome-shell-extension-presentation-mode-git 20111022-1 -> 20111207-1
$ echo $?
1
$ pacaur -s gio-sharp-git
aur/gio-sharp-git 20120109-1 (97) [installed]
    a branch of the official gtk-sharp/gio to get gio-sharp building
    on gtk-sharp 2.12
$ echo $?
1

command fails, but exit code is 0:

$ pacaur --sync doesnotexist
:: no results found for doesnotexist
 there is nothing to do
$ echo $?
0

3) missing newline in output.
The output of pacman seems to be missing a newline/carriage return after the prompt. I tested this with terminals at various widths and it does not happen when using pacman or pacman-color to install the same package. I supose it has something to do with the automatically anwsered prompt (Proceed with installation? [Y/n]).

==> Installing package marlin-bzr with pacman-color -U...
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...

Targets (1): marlin-bzr-775-1

Total Download Size:    0,00 MB
Total Installed Size:   2,72 MB

Proceed with installation? [Y/n] (1/1) checking package integrity                   [##########] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                  [##########] 100%
(1/1) upgrading marlin-bzr                         [##########] 100%

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

Quick answers:

1) I haven't coded the bash completion file myself, but last time I looked at it it was working correctly. I probably broke something in an update as usual, meh. Edit: hu, I'm actually not sure about package name completion. But what I know for sure is that there is room to improve the completion file (any help is warmly welcome!).
2) pacaur -k, -s: Either cower returns weird exit code sometimes, or this is due to my poor coding skills. I bet on the later, what about you? :]
pacaur --sync doesnotexist: I explicitly return 0 when pacaur output "there is nothing to do" but here it shouldn't appear. This last case has been fixed in a later version (2.4.8)
3) won't be fixed, as this is seems directly related to pacman. See issue #38 and this forum post. Hopefully not serious, but if someone happens to write a patch, please not to forget to send it to the pacman devs :]

Also, thanks a lot for your bug reports!

Last edited by Spyhawk (2012-01-10 00:11:26)

berz_

Member

Registered: 2011-06-12

Posts: 26

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

Thanks for your quick reply.

1) Can anyone using pacaur-legacy check whether autocomplete fails similarly for them to rule out a configuration error on my side? 
If so I will probably look into it when the lack of autocompletion gets on my nerves.

2) I did manage to find the problem with pacaur -s returning exit code 1 when cower did find matches. On line 73 (git version):

SearchAur() {
    [[ ! $quiet ]] && $cower -s $@
    [[ $quiet ]] && $cower -sq --color=never $@
}

SearchAur always returns exit code 1 when not in quiet mode because the last command to run, [[ $quiet ]] returns 1.
Other parts of the code are quite similar (eg: CheckAur), so this style of formatting is probably the reason why several operations return false exit codes.
This is a proposed fix, but keep in mind that my bash skills are underdeveloped.

SearchAur() {
    if [[ $quiet ]] 
        then cower -sq --color=never $@
        else cower -s $@
    fi
}

3) I was expecting it to be a pacman issue. Is there a bug filed for this problem?
Other than solving the issue in pacman, simply hiding the prompt might be an option since (1) a prompt is useless if it can't be anwsered, (2) useless goes against minimalism and (3) it is ugly.
I tried to find a way to hide it, but haven't found an elegant solution. My first attempt involved using sed, but it didn't work and messed up the colors. Then I noticed by chance that the prompt is printed to stderr, so the prompt could be hidden by hiding stderr, while keeping the colors:

$ sudo sh -c "yes | pacman-color -U pacaur-legacy-2.4.3-1-any.pkg.tar.xz" 2>/dev/null 

The problem here is that 1) it's an ugly hack and 2) I don't know whether prompts are the only thing pacman prints to stderr, so this might hide important information.

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

1) Can anyone using pacaur-legacy check whether autocomplete fails similarly for them to rule out a configuration error on my side? 
If so I will probably look into it when the lack of autocompletion gets on my nerves.

You're right, that name completion doesn't work with the arguments you mentioned above. Also, please note that:
- name completion doesn't wok with 2 characters or less ("co" will return an error, but "cow" will return a result). This is related to the AUR search limitation to 3 characters or more.
- --version must not be autocompleted, as it returns version of pacaur and not packages version.

SearchAur always returns exit code 1 when not in quiet mode because the last command to run, [[ $quiet ]] returns 1.

Yes, I'm using this weird 2 lines style notation here because the short, one-line style notation didn't work but I never though about checking error code here. Also, it seems a one-line notation work as expected now for pacaur -s/ pacaur -i:

SearchAur() {
    [[ $quiet ]] && $cower -sq --color=never $@ || $cower -s $@
}
InfoAur() {
    [[ $count -eq 1 ]] && $cower -i $@ || $cower -ii $@
}

I guess I changed something in other part of the code in the meantime, so I'll be able to use that one line instead of the faulty code used now. However, there is still bug left with pacaur -k as the same one line doesn't work:

CheckAur() {
    [[ $quiet ]] && $cower -uq --color=never $@ || $cower -u $@
}

But here it seems that is cower -uq/cower -u itself that returns error exit code 1 each and every time, am I right?
Edit: I opened a new cower issue here

3) I was expecting it to be a pacman issue. Is there a bug filed for this problem?
Other than solving the issue in pacman, simply hiding the prompt might be an option since (1) a prompt is useless if it can't be anwsered, (2) useless goes against minimalism and (3) it is ugly.

No, I didn't filed a bug yet. My bad. Will do that, but my guess is that nobody will care about it as pacaur is probably the only soft that answer pacman prompt with the "yes" utility. Everyone else use "--noconfirm", but I can't use it and have a fast workfow that handles correctly conflicts.

I'll have a look at your "hack", there might be an elegant way of doing that without hiding compilation output.
Thanks again for your report - people like you help me to improve pacaur over time, and I really appreciate it :]

Last edited by Spyhawk (2012-01-10 14:48:37)

berz_

Member

Registered: 2011-06-12

Posts: 26

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

You're right, that name completion doesn't work with the arguments you mentioned above.

I will look into it.

However, there is still bug left with pacaur -k as the same one line doesn't work:

CheckAur() {
    [[ $quiet ]] && $cower -uq --color=never $@ || $cower -u $@
}

But here it seems that is cower -uq/cower -u itself that returns error exit code 1 each and every time, am I right?

The code above seems to work fine here, and cower -uq / cower -u do return 0. At the moment there is nothing to be updated, I will test again when an AUR package get updated.

No, I didn't filed a bug yet. My bad. Will do that, but my guess is that nobody will care about it as pacaur is probably the only soft that answer pacman prompt with the "yes" utility. Everyone else use "--noconfirm", but I can't use it and have a fast workfow that handles correctly conflicts.

Pacaur is the only one that does it right: prompting the user before building. With aurget it would start building a package and I'd go do something else, and when I'd come back the instalation failed because some prompt timed out.

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

I will look into it.

Great! :]

The code above seems to work fine here, and cower -uq / cower -u do return 0. At the moment there is nothing to be updated, I will test again when an AUR package get updated.

Exit code is actually correct when there is nothing to be updated, but it seems to be incorrect when updates are available (ie, "cower -u/-uq" return 1, and "cower -u doesnotexist" return 0). Not sure if that is what was intended in the first place.

Edit: Well, that is intended - cower -u return 1 when updates are available:

cower.c

/* we need to exit with a non-zero value when:
   * a) search/info/download returns nothing
   * b) update (without download) returns something
   * this is opposing behavior, so just XOR the result on a pure update */

Does it make sens not to "fix" this error code, and keep the current behavior?

Pacaur is the only one that does it right: prompting the user before building. With aurget it would start building a package and I'd go do something else, and when I'd come back the instalation failed because some prompt timed out.

If I'm not mistaken, bauerbill was doing it too. Pacaur did not invent anything, it just take the best pieces of code out here :]
Also, I've to say that I really like your "hack" to hide the prompt. It seems to work very well, kudo to you! I'm currently testing different scenario to ensure there is no problem.

Last edited by Spyhawk (2012-01-11 00:29:47)

berz_

Member

Registered: 2011-06-12

Posts: 26

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

I rewrote the bash autocompletion using cower's as a template. It might contain bugs as my bash skills are limited and I had no clue about autocompletion before today. I put in loads of comments explaining how it works. I put it up at https://gist.github.com/1591819.

Exit code is actually correct when there is nothing to be updated, but it seems to be incorrect when updates are available (ie, "cower -u/-uq" return 1, and "cower -u doesnotexist" return 0). Not sure if that is what was intended in the first place.

I don't think that's the way it is intended to work, it would be more logical the other way around. I still can't test cower -u/-uq, but "cower -u doesnotexist" does indeed output 0, which probably means the problem isn't in pacaur but in cower.

Also, I've to say that I really like your "hack" to hide the prompt. It seems to work very well, kudo to you! I'm currently testing different scenario to ensure there is no problem.

While it does work well, what is does it throwing away everything pacman -U outputs to the standard error stream. Since pacman prints all its errors and warnings to this stream it might cause confusion if we hide it. If pacman fails to install a package, users would not be informed of the reason for this failure. What would be better is to filter out only the lines containing prompts. I found a way to do this here, but this will only work in the bash shell. I found another solution here, which does seem to be compatible with non-bash shells. The only problem I have with it is that it looks really complicated and ugly.

{ sudo sh -c " yes | pacman-color -U package.pkg.tar.xz" 2>&1 1>&3 | grep -iv '\[y/n\]' 1>&2; } 3>&1

What it does is redirrecting stderr, filtering out all lines containing '[y/n]' and then putting everything back.

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

I rewrote the bash autocompletion using cower's as a template. It might contain bugs as my bash skills are limited and I had no clue about autocompletion before today. I put in loads of comments explaining how it works. I put it up at https://gist.github.com/1591819.

Thanks a lot! It seems to work perfectly, and is a big improvement of the previous completion file. The only changes I made is to remove "--version" and "--help" from the "options" array, as both options are already in "operations" and are not intended to be used in conjunction with other operations. I pushed it to git, let me know if you need to push improvements (post it here, or fork it on git then send me a pull request).
Also, zsh completion might become available soon, thanks to nicoulaj.

I don't think that's the way it is intended to work, it would be more logical the other way around. I still can't test cower -u/-uq, but "cower -u doesnotexist" does indeed output 0, which probably means the problem isn't in pacaur but in cower.

Hint: you can simulate a dummy update by reinstalling an AUR package and changing the release number from "1" to "0" when editing the PKGBUILD.

Well, actually that "bug" is intended. See falconindy's comment on issue #32. In short, exit code 1 equals "update available" and exit code 0 equals "no update". This is intended to use in a cron job (and I do understand the idea), and I'm actually wondering if it is better to keep the same logic or to override cower's default while using it through pacaur. Both are fine to me, as I don't really care about exit code in my day to day usage of pacaur (nor any software). Your opinion would be very welcomed here. :]

While it does work well, what is does it throwing away everything pacman -U outputs to the standard error stream. Since pacman prints all its errors and warnings to this stream it might cause confusion if we hide it. If pacman fails to install a package, users would not be informed of the reason for this failure. What would be better is to filter out only the lines containing prompts. I found a way to do this here, but this will only work in the bash shell. I found another solution here, which does seem to be compatible with non-bash shells. The only problem I have with it is that it looks really complicated and ugly.

Yes, in some case the "simple" solution could be problematic (I've found at least one real life user case where the user wouldn't understand what's happening), so I'm in favour of using the alternative that is 100% reliable. Although I agree it is a bit complicated, it is still very short. I'll test it to make sure it also works well when used with "makepkg -sfi".
Thanks a lot for having investigated this issue.

Last edited by Spyhawk (2012-01-11 14:56:47)

berz_

Member

Registered: 2011-06-12

Posts: 26

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

The only changes I made is to remove "--version" and "--help" from the "options" array, as both options are already in "operations" and are not intended to be used in conjunction with other operations.

When adding the options I copied them from the manpage. -v, --version, -h and --help are listed as options there instead of operations.

Well, actually that "bug" is intended. See falconindy's comment on issue #32. In short, exit code 1 equals "update available" and exit code 0 equals "no update". This is intended to use in a cron job (and I do understand the idea), and I'm actually wondering if it is better to keep the same logic or to override cower's default while using it through pacaur.

I think the meaning of exit status is fairly consistent, from the bash manpage: "a command which exits with a zero exit status has succeeded. An exit status of zero indicates success.". I am against cower using it to mean  "update available / no update available". Since the function of -u in cower is to check whether there are updates available it should return 0 (succes) if it manages to do this (even when the system is up to date) and 1 if it fails. Reasons for failure might be: faulty parameters, can't connect to the server, specified package can't be found, ...
As for pacaur: I don't see an easy way to correct the wrong error codes that cower returns. And since cower's maintainer doesn't want to change it I guess it will stay this way.

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

When adding the options I copied them from the manpage. -v, --version, -h and --help are listed as options there instead of operations.

My bad, once again, you entirely correct here. I should have listed -v and -h under "operation" in the man page, same for the --help menu. I've read that menu and changed entries so many times that I simply haven't seen this big mistake.

I think the meaning of exit status is fairly consistent, from the bash manpage: "a command which exits with a zero exit status has succeeded. An exit status of zero indicates success.". I am against cower using it to mean  "update available / no update available". Since the function of -u in cower is to check whether there are updates available it should return 0 (succes) if it manages to do this (even when the system is up to date) and 1 if it fails. Reasons for failure might be: faulty parameters, can't connect to the server, specified package can't be found, ...
As for pacaur: I don't see an easy way to correct the wrong error codes that cower returns. And since cower's maintainer doesn't want to change it I guess it will stay this way.

Yes, cower's approach is a bit "unconventional", but I understand the idea behind this move. Also, I'm sure falconindy would think about it if one can present him a viable alternative. If I were to override the default exit codes, I guess I could do it without complicating too much the code: return 0 in any case (update available or not), but check package name validity prior to "pacaur -k <pkg>". If package name is valid, return 0, else 1. If cower/pacaur can't connect to server, exit error code 1 would be returned anyway.

Edit: 2.5.3 released with the updated bash completion file and a better error exit for "pacaur -k". I'll include the "prompt hiding" in a later release as I won't have time to work on it in the following days.

Last edited by Spyhawk (2012-01-13 13:22:26)

BasT

Member

Registered: 2010-08-28

Posts: 114

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

:: dropbox requires $CARCH bash magic compatibility to be enabled.
Check configuration in /etc/pacaur.conf or use --carch option.

Took me a while to figure out why my settings in pacaur.conf were no longer working.
Either this error message is false or the change in directory for the conf file was unintended.

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

Forgot to change that line - will do in a next release. Conf file was moved, please read console output when installing/updating packages.

BasT

Member

Registered: 2010-08-28

Posts: 114

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

There is/was no output. I uninstalled and reinstalled to check.

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

BaST> Please ensure that your conf file is located at /etc/xdg/pacaur/pacaur.conf. Apart from the new location, 2.5.x is similar to 2.4.x (that the only reason I increased the second number). I included a message output that should appear when upgrading from 2.4.x to 2.5.x, but I'm afraid it doesn't show if you uninstall/reinstall, sorry for that.

silk

Member

Registered: 2012-01-21

Posts: 4

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

I have a question for you.
When doing

pacaur -m package_name

Everything runs sweet but... I don't find the package made, lol...
I thought logically your script would cp the file in $PWD.

Where is it located?

Last edited by silk (2012-01-22 11:34:07)

MAroco

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-01-20

Posts: 72

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

The default for the build-directory where the file is probably still lingering around is "/tmp/pacaurtmp-$USER".  You can have a look at the variable "buildDir" in pacaur.conf to make sure this is really the case on your system. In older versions that conf file was located in /etc directly, recently it was moved to /etc/xdg/pacaur.

If that doesn't help something like "locate name-of-the-package-you-build" should do the trick .
Hope it helps, good luck

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

silk> Either in $buildDir (/etc/xdg/pacaur/pacaur.conf) or $PKGDEST (/etc/makepkg.conf).

Please also note that errors messages still refer to the old conf file location. I'll fix them as soon as I'll have access to my personal machine again (abroad for a few weeks).

donbex

Member

Registered: 2010-12-23

Posts: 53

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

I tried this out of curiosity.
In my pacaur.conf I have 'buildDir="/tmp/pacaurtmp-$USER"', while the $PKGDEST in makepkt.conf is not set (hence the built package is left in the build directory).
When building a package with 'pacaur -m package_name' it looks like the built package gets removed when cleaning up the build directory.

MAroco> you should update the locate database (with the 'updatedb' program) before searching for a new file with locate, otherwise it won't find it.

MAroco

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-01-20

Posts: 72

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

@donbex: good point indeed concerning  updatedb, thanks for making that clear (it was actually clear *to me*, but my phrasing was quite missleading nonetheless... sorry to all I may have confused.)

For completeness sake I just tested what happens IF one sets a $PKGDEST. In that case the package gets build inside buildDir but WILL INDEED be copied to $PKGDEST before the buildDir gets deleted. As expected, I just wanted to make sure it really works that way.

So that leaves two options I guess: either define $PKGDEST in /etc/makepkg.conf and find your package in the folder you defined or set "clean=false" in pacaur.conf and find the package in /tmp/pacaurtmp-$USER/packagename.

Actually now the comment of Silk about PWD also makes much more sense to me...    In case "clean=true" is set while no $PKGDEST is defined it would really make sense if pacaur copied the package to PWD before deleting the buildDir.

Spyhawk

Member

Registered: 2006-07-07

Posts: 485

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

For completeness sake I just tested what happens IF one sets a $PKGDEST. In that case the package gets build inside buildDir but WILL INDEED be copied to $PKGDEST before the buildDir gets deleted. As expected, I just wanted to make sure it really works that way.

So that leaves two options I guess: either define $PKGDEST in /etc/makepkg.conf and find your package in the folder you defined or set "clean=false" in pacaur.conf and find the package in /tmp/pacaurtmp-$USER/packagename.

This is the intended behavior/workaround.

Actually now the comment of Silk about PWD also makes much more sense to me...    In case "clean=true" is set while no $PKGDEST is defined it would really make sense if pacaur copied the package to PWD before deleting the buildDir.

I'll see what I can do in this regard.

MAroco

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-01-20

Posts: 72

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

Tha man is just great

Another thing:
- Since pacman 4 arrived in core pacaur-legacy understandably disappeared.
- On the AUR page of "pacaur"  https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=49145 I just found your comment "This PKGBUILD is now obsolete".
- And on the other hand on the "pacaur-git" page you wrote "Stable release of this package is pacaur" and link to the above page...

So this is me being confused...
Question: will there only be the git-version in the future or is there going to be another stable version? If so where do I find it? "pacaur -Ss pacaur" only shows "pacaur" and "pacaur-git" from above. Did I miss something?
Thanks for all your work!! Cheers.

Mad Fish

Member

Registered: 2009-09-22

Posts: 295

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

Bug report: colors from makepkg/compiling process are lost, and there is apparently no way to keep them.

bwat47

Member

Registered: 2009-10-07

Posts: 638

Re: pacaur - an AUR helper that minimizes user interaction

Tha man is just great

Another thing:
- Since pacman 4 arrived in core pacaur-legacy understandably disappeared.
- On the AUR page of "pacaur"  https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=49145 I just found your comment "This PKGBUILD is now obsolete".
- And on the other hand on the "pacaur-git" page you wrote "Stable release of this package is pacaur" and link to the above page...

So this is me being confused...
Question: will there only be the git-version in the future or is there going to be another stable version? If so where do I find it? "pacaur -Ss pacaur" only shows "pacaur" and "pacaur-git" from above. Did I miss something?
Thanks for all your work!! Cheers.

Yeah, this is also confusing me... Any clarification?