Arch Linux: aurutils installation and configuration

aurutils_inst_conf.md

aurutils installation and configuration

This is not a getting started guide, just notes to myself. Due to my limited knowledge there could be mistakes and better ways to do things. I have configured aurutils to the best of my knowledge after reading the manpages and forums. Please refer to aurutils(7) manpages for installation and configuration.

Reference: aurutils(7)

Install aurutils

Install the aurutils using the normal AUR package installation procedure. Until I found aurutils, I used to create a separate directory ~/aur/ for all AUR packages.

$ cd ~/aur
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/aurutils.git
$ cd aurutils-git
$ makepkg -si

Creating local repository

Create a separate pacman configuration file for the custom repository in /etc/pacman.d/

$ sudo nano /etc/pacman.d/custom

Add the lines in the file /etc/pacman.d/custom:

[options]
CacheDir = /var/cache/pacman/pkg
CacheDir = /var/cache/pacman/custom
CleanMethod = KeepCurrent

[custom]
SigLevel = Optional TrustAll
Server = file:///var/cache/pacman/custom

Add the following lines for the custom repository configuration to the end of /etc/pacman.conf

Include = /etc/pacman.d/custom

Create the repository root in /var/cache/pacman

sudo install -d /var/cache/pacman/custom -o $USER

Create the database in /var/cache/pacman/custom/

repo-add /var/cache/pacman/custom/custom.db.tar

I have not tried this, if you already have built packages from AUR using makepkg -si copy/move all the *.pkg.tar.xz files to /var/cache/pacman/custom/ and

$ cd /var/cache/pacman/custom
$ repo-add -n myrepo.db.tar *.pkg.tar.xz

Then synchronize pacman:

$ sudo pacman -Syu

For the above change from repose to repo-add see discussion

Install packages

For example we want to install tor-browser-en from AUR. Use aursync to download and build AUR package and place it in the custom repository. Then use pacman -S packagename to install the package.

$ aursync tor-browser-en
$ sudo pacman -S tor-browser-en

Build and update all installed AUR packages

Update all installed AUR packages with aursync

aur sync -u

So I tried to use this guide and ran into a few issues. I thought I'd include them here to help others.

1. In this step repo-add -n myrepo.db.tar *.pkg.tar.xz instead of typing myrepo.db.tar use the custom.db.tar you created in the previous step. Its obvious in hindsight but it messed me up my first time installing this
2. If you see a message requiring vifm this means the sync process has tried to run an aur view command and failed. This is a deadly error that stops the build process so when you run sudo pacman -S my-package later, it will fail. Either install vifm or run aur sync with the --noview option to skip that step and continue on with the build
3. To confirm that your packages have been built and are available in your repo run pacman -Slq custom and you should see a list of packages available in your custom repo
4. Finally I've found that after building your packages you have to install them manually with sudo pacman -Sy my-package1 my-package2 once before sudo pacman -Syu will update your packages. To avoid having to list every package maually you can use the above command like so: sudo pacman -Sy $(pacman -Slq custom)

I am new to aurutils so some of these things may be obvious or I may have misunderstood something but these were all things that I got stuck on or that helped me so I wanted to write them down somewhere and I thought other might benefit

I followed this guide but on the step repo-add /var/cache/pacman/custom/custom.db.tar i get ==> No changes made to package database. is this guide still accurate?

I followed this guide but on the step repo-add /var/cache/pacman/custom/custom.db.tar i get ==> No changes made to package database. is this guide still accurate?

I found a way by copying the previously built aurutils to the custom repo aur

cp aurutils-19.3-1-any.pkg.tar.zst /var/cache/pacman/aur
repo-add /var/cache/pacman/aur/aur.db.tar.gz /var/cache/pacman/aur/aurutils*.pkg.tar.zst
pacman -Syu

Thanks @geosharma for your guide.

And @TerranWorks thank you for your points. It helped me out to get my setup running. I had to install vifm
I had assumed its not required thinking it is just a warning message. Turns out I was wrong.