First time AUR helper (cower) questions

Simurgh · 2018-03-09 22:30:21

Hi,

so the only manual way of updating AUR packages is to check the AUR (on this webpage) if the version number increased, then installing the application like I did the first time?

when I use

$ cower -du

it just checks my installed AUR stuff and if there has been an update it downloads the thing and then I have to go from folder to folder and

$ makepkg -si

?

why did cower download a couple of things I didn't install from the AUR?

So I always read you're supposed to know what the AUR helper does, but the wiki doesn't explicity state what has to be done in order to keep AUR stuff updatet and there are no wiki articles on the concrete AUR helpers what they do and how they work, so I'm just asking here. I decided to use cower because I read it a few times and it seems to be rather minimalistic.

Best regards

jasonwryan · 2018-03-09 22:38:39

No, there are other approaches, as per the wiki page. You can just use git if you want the simplest approach.

why did cower download a couple of things I didn't install from the AUR?

What "things"? Dependencies of packages that it did update?

There doesn't need to be AUR pages on each helper: they have man pages that describe their functions in detail.

paulkerry · 2018-03-09 22:41:28

Simurgh wrote:

so the only manual way of updating AUR packages is to check the AUR (on this webpage) if the version number increased, then installing the application like I did the first time?

This command...

cower -uv

will show the aur packages you have installed and which packages have an update.

Then

cower -d package

and

cd package ; makepkg

I've found it helps to set TargetDir in ~/.config/cower/config to download and extract the aur packages into.

Trilby · 2018-03-09 22:45:56

Simurgh wrote:

so the only manual way of updating AUR packages is to check the AUR (on this webpage) if the version number increased, then installing the application like I did the first time?

That's one way, not the only way. If you keep the the old aur repos around you can just `git pull` and you will find out if there are any updates, and if there are you will then have them and be ready to run `makepkg -i`.

Simurgh wrote:

So I always read you're supposed to know what the AUR helper does, but the wiki doesn't explicity state what has to be done in order to keep AUR stuff updatet and there are no wiki articles on the concrete AUR helpers what they do and how they work

True on both counts. You should know what any AUR tool you use is doing, because *none* of them are officially supported. Makepkg is the officially supported method of building packages. AUR helpers are (generally) not documented in the wiki potentially for two reasons: 1, it may not be the best place, but more importantly 2, no one has written the articles (I suspect a well written wiki page for *any* AUR helper would certainly have a place on the wiki).

Simurgh wrote:

I decided to use cower because I read it a few times and it seems to be rather minimalistic.

Good choice. Note that I think cower has been discontinued. But it still works great for now.

As for why cower downloaded multiple repos, I can only speculate that perhaps there was a new dependency added to one of the AUR packages that had an update avilable. If you want a more concrete answer for that, though, you'll have to provide specifics. What package were your updating: what others were downloaded?

progandy · 2018-03-09 22:55:37

cower may also download a "new" package if a package you have installed was removed from the binary repositories and uploaded to the AUR.

Good choice. Note that I think cower has been discontinued. But it still works great for now.

Yes, falconindy abandoned cower and wrote auracle instead.

Last edited by progandy (2018-03-09 22:57:20)

Simurgh · 2018-03-09 23:48:48

Hi,
thanks for all the answers.
So the updates for applications I had installed were for google-chrome, telegram-desktop-bin and minecraft. Now I also have avogadro (which apparently was dropped from extras), kdebindings-python, kdepimlibs4, qtwebkit and ttf-oxygen.
So I guess I should clean up orphaned packages with pacman to get rid of that stuff that was dropped and is now no longer a dependency?
And if google-chrome etc. built successfully without installing any of the "new" packages, that means they aren't dependencies?

So if I don't explicitly need any of the "new"/dropped packages, because I don't use the applications and everything important built without problems, I can uninstall them with pacman?

Trilby · 2018-03-10 00:03:22

Simurgh wrote:

And if google-chrome etc. built successfully without installing any of the "new" packages, that means they aren't dependencies?

Not necessarily. If pacman installed it (without having to override missing dependencies) then yes.

Simurgh wrote:

So if I don't explicitly need any of the "new"/dropped packages, because I don't use the applications and everything important built without problems, I can uninstall them with pacman?

Yes.

edit. To follow up on the last 'yes', the fact that these packages were dropped from the repos is actually only tangentially related to the reason for the affirmative answer. These packages are a potentially small subset of packages that you could safely remove. The full list, which would include these 'dropped' packages, can be obtained with `pacman -Qdt`. This will list packages that were installed as a dependency which are no longer needed by any installed package (regardless of whether they have been dropped from the repos or not).

It is good practice to occasionally review the results of `pacman -Qdt` and remove anything that is not needed - anything that you do need you may even want to change the install reason to 'explicit'. An optimally maintained system shouldn't give any output for `pacman -Qdt`.

Last edited by Trilby (2018-03-10 14:27:46)

Arch Linux

#1 2018-03-09 22:30:21

First time AUR helper (cower) questions

#2 2018-03-09 22:38:39

Re: First time AUR helper (cower) questions

#3 2018-03-09 22:41:28

Re: First time AUR helper (cower) questions

#4 2018-03-09 22:45:56

Re: First time AUR helper (cower) questions

#5 2018-03-09 22:55:37

Re: First time AUR helper (cower) questions

#6 2018-03-09 23:48:48

Re: First time AUR helper (cower) questions

#7 2018-03-10 00:03:22

Re: First time AUR helper (cower) questions

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