You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
Hey, I just installed Arch for the first time yesterday and am loving it.
Quick question about AUR, what exactly is the point? Why not get the package directly from whoever wrote it? Are the packages in AUR configured specially to run on Arch?
For example, why would I download the android sdk from AUR as opposed to directly from Google?
Offline
Welcome newbie. One of the cornerstones of Arch is pacman for package management. My advice is that you don't install ANYTHING from a websource without doing it through pacman. Browse to the wiki and read about the AUR, pacman, and the Arch Way.
CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck • AUR packages • Zsh and other configs
Offline
pacman gives you dependency resolution.Often it's not enough to install package A, you also need to install packages B and C, because A depends on them. Pacman (or an AUR helper) will do that for you. The same goes for uninstalling.
Offline
please search the wiki for AUR to get a better understanding of what it is and how it should be used.
and welcome to Arch and the forums
There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !
Offline
Welcome newbie. One of the cornerstones of Arch is pacman for package management. My advice is that you don't install ANYTHING from a websource without doing it through pacman. Browse to the wiki and read about the AUR, pacman, and the Arch Way.
Isn't pacman just a package manager? Couldn't you download the package and install it locally, using pacman?
Offline
Isn't pacman just a package manager? Couldn't you download the package and install it locally, using pacman?
If you have a package that Pacman recognizes, yes you can. Otherwise you will have to create a package yourself from the downloaded source.
ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ
Offline
graysky wrote:Welcome newbie. One of the cornerstones of Arch is pacman for package management. My advice is that you don't install ANYTHING from a websource without doing it through pacman. Browse to the wiki and read about the AUR, pacman, and the Arch Way.
Isn't pacman just a package manager? Couldn't you download the package and install it locally, using pacman?
Pacman needs to have some idea about the package. AUR provides PKGBUILD which tells makepkg what to build and install.
Pacman can manage only Arch packages not source archives / .run binaries.
Offline
PKGBUILD = script file used to tell makepkg what to do to build an Arch package
makepkg = package building script which reads the PKGBUILD to make packages
pacman = package manager to install, remove, manage deps, search, etc. packages both in official/unofficial repos and based on ones you wish to build from the AUR
The syntax of a PKGBUILD is a series of bash commands. The AUR holds (as of today) 30,859 PKGBUILDs/related files for many MANY different pieces of software.
CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck • AUR packages • Zsh and other configs
Offline
The AUR does not host the sourcecode to anything. Look at some PKGBUILD files, they usually (if not almost always) fetch the tarball from the author's web presence. It basically does, what you propose.
Offline
The biggest difference:
Pulling PKGBUILD from the AUR will let you compile a package from source, whereas the main arch repositories have precompiled packages. If you try to install, say, Banshee from it's website you will only find packages for distros like Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora etc. These wont work with Arch.
The AUR lets the community have a central place to pull the needed information to build MANY programs with a single command, and not just be limited to the 4k packages in the official repos.
Ha ha...limited to 4000 software packages. I love linux.
Team Ignition Kernel Developer
linux-ideapad developer/maintainer
Flame Kernel developer for Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S3
Want a cheap, reliable VPS with AWESOME customer service?
Offline
Pages: 1