Arch User Repository
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Provides an overview of the Arch User Repository. |
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The Arch User Repository (AUR for short) is a community-driven repository of PKGBUILDs for Arch users. Packages in the AUR are built using PKGBUILDs and are not pre-built binaries like from the official repositories. The AUR was created to organize and share new packages from the community and to help expedite popular packages' inclusion into the [community] repository.
A good number of new packages that enter the official repositories start in the AUR. In the AUR, users are able to contribute their own package builds (PKGBUILD and related files). The AUR community has the ability to vote for or against packages in the AUR. If a package becomes popular enough -- provided it has a compatible license and good packaging technique -- it may to be entered in the [community] repository (directly accessible by pacman or ABS).
Besides this article, please make sure to read the AUR User Guidelines if you want to be an AUR User, and the AUR Trusted User Guidelines if you plan to be a Trusted User.
Getting started
Users can search and download PKGBUILDs from the AUR Web Interface. These PKGBUILDs can be built into installable packages using makepkg, then installed using pacman.
- Read the AUR User Guidelines for more info, including:
- Visit the AUR Web Interface to inform yourself on updates and happenings. There you will also find statistics and an up-to-date list of newest available packages available in AUR.
- Take a look at the #FAQ.
- You may wish to adjust /etc/makepkg.conf to better optimize for your processor prior to building packages from the AUR. A significant improvement in compile times can be realized on systems with multi-core processors by adjusting the MAKEFLAGS variable. Users can also enable hardware-specific optimizations in GCC via the CFLAGS variable. See the makepkg.conf for more information.
- Install "base-devel" (pacman -S base-devel), because members of this group are not explicitly required by AUR packages which may not build without them (more info in this thread).
History
The following items are listed for historical purposes only. They have since been superseded by the AUR and are no longer available.
At the beginning, there was:
ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/incoming
...and people contributed by simply uploading the PKGBUILD, the needed supplementary files, and the built package itself to the server. The package remained there until a Package Maintainer saw it and adopted it.
Then the Trusted User Repositories were born. Certain individuals in the community were allowed to host their own repositories for anyone to use. The AUR expanded on this basis, with the aim of making it both more flexible and more usable. In fact, the AUR maintainers are still referred to as TUs (Trusted Users).
FAQ
Common questions
Q: What is AUR?
Q: What is a TU?
Q: What's the difference between [unsupported] and [community]?
Q: How many votes does it take to get a PKGBUILD into [community]?
Q: How do I make a PKGBUILD?
Common problems
Q: I'm trying to do pacman -S foo; it isn't working but I know it's in [community]
Q: Foo in AUR is outdated; what do I do?
Q: I have a PKGBUILD I would like to submit; can someone check it to see if there are any errors?
Q: Foo in AUR doesn't compile when I do makepkg; what should I do?
- Run pacman -Syyu before compiling anything with makepkg as the problem may be that your system is not up-to-date.
- Ensure you have both "base" and "base-devel" groups installed.
- Try using the "-s" option with makepkg to check and install all the dependencies needed before starting the build process.