AUR helpers
Warning: AUR helpers are not officially supported by Arch Linux. It is recommended to become familiar with the manual build process in order to be prepared to troubleshoot problems on one's own.
AUR helpers are written to automate certain tasks for the Arch User Repository.
Uploading
- aur4_import.sh — Splits a package from a git repository with multiple packages, adding/updating
.SRCINFO
for every commit. - aur4_make_submodule.sh — Replaces a package in a bigger git repository with an AUR 4 submodule, including
.SRCINFO
. - aurpublish — Manage AUR packages as git subtrees. The generation of
.SRCINFO
files,PKGBUILD
checking and the creation of a per package commit message template is left to the git hooks in the same repo.
Build and search
This is a list of helper utilities that search, download and/or build packages.
- aura — A package manager for Arch Linux written in Haskell. (Forum page)
- auracle — An AUR client written in C++.
- aurel — Search, vote and download AUR packages from Emacs. (Forum page)
- aurget — pacman-like interface to the AUR, without wrapping pacman commands.
- aurquery — Caching wrapper around the AUR's RPC interface using the python3-aur library.
- aurutils — Helper tools for the AUR. (Forum page)
- bauerbill — Powerpill/pacman extension with support for building packages from ABS and AUR. (Forum page)
- burgaur — A front-end for cower written in Python.
- cower — AUR search and download agent written in C, which also checks for updates and package dependencies. (Forum page)
- pacaur — An AUR helper that minimizes user interaction. (Forum page)
- pacget — A wrapper around pacaur to mimic yaourt's search feature.
- packer — Wrapper for pacman and the AUR. (Forum page)
- pbget — Retrieve source files from the Arch SVN and CVS web interface, the AUR, and the ABS rsync server.
- PKGBUILDer — An AUR helper with dependency support written in Python 3.
- prm — An AUR and ABS helper.
- repoctl — Tool to help manage local repositories (AUR support).
- spinach — An AUR helper written in Bash
- trizen — A wrapper for the AUR written in Perl.
- wrapaur — A pacman and AUR wrapper written in bash.
- || wrapaurAUR
- yaah — Yet another AUR helper
- yaourt — A wrapper for the AUR and regular packages.
- yay — AUR helper written in Go.
- https://github.com/Jguer/yay || yayAUR or yay-binAUR (binary)
Maintenance
- pkgbuild-watch — Looks for changes on the upstream web pages
- pkgbuildup — Helps AUR package maintainers automatically update PKGBUILD files. Supports a template variable syntax.
- pkgcheck — Uses rules in PKGBUILDs to parse upstream version information or looks for changes by checksumming the web page
- https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162816 || Repository: GitHub
- pkgoutofdate — Parses the source URL from PKGBUILDs and tries to find new versions of packages by incrementing the version number and sending requests to the web server
Libraries
- haskell-archlinux — Library to access the AUR and package metadata from the Haskell programming language
- python3-aur — Python 3 modules for accessing AUR package information and automating AUR interactions.
Graphical
- Aarchup — Fork of archup. Has the same options as archup plus a few other features. For differences between both please check changelog.
- Argon — Graphical frontend to pacaur, featuring package installation, removal, and updating; and update notifications for both official repository and AUR packages.
- pamac — A DBus daemon and Gtk3 frontend for libalpm written in Vala.
- PkgBrowser — Application for searching and browsing Arch packages, showing details on selected packages.
Comparison table
The columns have the following meaning:
- Secure: does not source the PKGBUILD at all by default; or, alerts the user and offers the opportunity to inspect the PKGBUILD manually before it is sourced. Some helpers are known to source PKGBUILDs before the user can inspect them, allowing malicious code to be executed. Optional means that there is a command line flag or configuration option to prevent the automatic sourcing before viewing.
- Clean build: does not export new variables that can prevent a successful build process.
- Reliable parser: ability to handle complex packages by using the provided metadata (RPC/.SRCINFO) instead of PKGBUILD parsing, such as aws-cli-gitAUR.
- Reliable solver: ability to correctly solve and build complex dependency chains, such as plasma-git-metaAUR.
- Split packages: ability to correctly build and install split packages independently, such as python-virtualfishAUR and python2-virtualfishAUR.
- Git clone: uses git clones instead of downloading tarballs (deprecated since AUR 4).
- Syntax: P stands for Pacman-like, S for specific.
Name | Written In | Secure | Clean build | Reliable parser | Reliable solver | Split packages | Git clone | Shell completion | Syntax | Specificity |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
aura | Haskell | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No [1] | No | bash/zsh | P | Downgrade, ABS, powerpill support, multilingual, requires ArchHaskell |
auracle | C++ | Yes | N/A | Yes | Yes | N/A | No | N/A | S | No automatic builds |
aurel | Emacs Lisp | Yes | N/A | Yes | N/A | N/A | No | N/A | S | Emacs integration, no automatic builds |
aurget | Bash | Optional | Yes | No | No | No [2] | No | bash/zsh | P | sort by votes |
aurutils | Bash/C | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | zsh | S | vifm, PCRE, local repository, package signing, systemd-nspawn support |
bauerbill | Python | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | bash/zsh | P/S | Trust management, ABS support, extends Powerpill |
burgaur | Python/C | Optional, with mc | Yes | No | No | No | No | None | P | Wrapper for cower |
pacaur Maintainer needed! | Bash/C | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | bash/zsh | P/S | Minimizes user interaction, multilingual, sort by votes/popularity |
packer | Bash | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | None | P | - |
pbget | Python | Yes | N/A | Yes | N/A | N/A | Yes | None | S | No automatic builds |
PKGBUILDer | Python | Optional | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial [3] | Yes | None | P | Automatic builds by default, use -F to disable; multilingual
|
prm | Bash | Yes [4] | N/A | Yes | N/A | N/A | Yes | None | S | No automatic builds, ABS support |
repoctl | Go | Yes | N/A | Yes [5] | N/A | N/A | No | zsh | S | No automatic builds, local repository support |
spinach | Bash | Yes [6] | Yes | No | No | No | No | None | S | - |
trizen | Perl | Yes | Yes | Yes [7] | Yes | Yes [8] | Yes [9] | zsh | P | AUR comments |
wrapaur | Bash | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | None | S | Mirror updates, print news and AUR comments |
yaah | Bash | Yes | N/A | Yes | N/A | N/A | Optional | bash | S | No automatic builds |
yaourt | Bash/C | No (yaourt -Si) [10] [11] | No [12] | No | No [13] | No [14] | Optional | bash/zsh/fish | P | Backup, ABS support, AUR comments, multilingual |
yay | Go | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Partial | No | bash/zsh/fish | P | sort by votes |