On Arch Linux, there are a number of ways for getting all the popular and useful software directly on your system. By default, the package manager “Pacman” is restricted towards the official Arch Linux repository.
However, by default, the official Arch repository wasn’t meant to hold all the additional software you need. For that reason, there are other repositories like the AUR – a really powerful part of the Arch ecosystem. This repository allows community-developed packages to be installed in the easiest possible manner.
For installing a software from the AUR repository, there are 2 ways – building from source and using 3rd-party tools like Yaourt and Pacaur etc. Check out on enjoying Yaourt on your Arch system. Yaourt is getting older and obsolete, so why not switch towards a new one?
This particular AUR helper targets the “advanced” users. It’s specially designed for minimizing the user interactions. If you’re interested in Pacaur, make sure that you know on how the AUR software are installed in the classical manner (grabbing the source, building manually with “makepkg” etc.).
Pacaur
Pacaur is a great alternative to Yaourt. It’s another AUR (Arch User Repository) helper that aims performance and speed while minimizing the user interactions. The best part is, Pacaur uses a very minimalistic, uncluttered interface while packing powerful punches (secured RPC interface for solving dependency tree etc.).
Using “pacaur”, you can also search for any package name.
Let’s get started.
Installing Pacaur
Note – my system is by beloved Manjaro Linux – an exceptionally good quality distro that’s based on the Arch. Learn more on Manjaro Linux.
Pacaur is an AUR helper, so where else to go except AUR for grabbing it?
Make sure that your system has “git” –
sudo pacman -S git
Then, it’s time to grab the source code of “pacaur”.
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/pacaur.git
Download complete? Hurry up and start the building process!
cd pacaur/ makepkg -si
Voila! The installation is complete!
Pacaur usage
Pacaur follows the command structure quite similar to the “pacman”.
You can easily check whether all your packages are up-to-date –
pacaur -Syyuu
Let’s start with installing a package from the AUR repository.
pacaur -S <package_name>
Pacaur will prompt for user interaction – whether you wish to edit the installation files or confirmation etc. Let’s just add a couple more flags on the command structure –
pacaur -S --noedit --noconfirm <package_name>
Does the Pacaur log output in the terminal bother you? You can easily disable the annoyance with the “–silent” flag.
pacaur -S <package_name> --silent
THere are a lot of additional commands and features of Pacaur that you can start exploring right away! Check out Pacaur on GitHub.
