How To Install Pacaur In Arch Linux

Important Update:

Please don’t use Pacaur. It is out dated and discontinued. Use Yay AUR helper instead. https://ostechnix.com/yay-found-yet-another-reliable-aur-helper/

We already have covered the installation and usage of two AUR helpers namely Yay, Yaourt and Packer. Today, we are going to discuss about yet another AUR helper program called "Pacaur". It reduces the user interaction greatly while installing packages from AUR. Unlike Yaourt and Packer, Pacaur can install packages from both the official repositories and AUR. That said, Pacaur can be used by users who prefer to have a single tool to manage the official and AUR repositories, or by users who prefer to keep their AUR frontend separated from pacman. Also, the syntax of Pacaur is same as Pacman, the default package manager. So, you don't have to memorize commands. If you know how to use pacman, then it wouldn't be a problem to use Pacaur. It will also automatically prompt for sudo access when needed. It is built upon the well designed cower and expac C backends.

Install Pacaur In Arch Linux

First, install the necessary dependencies.

sudo pacman -S expac yajl --noconfirm

Next, create a temporary working directory for building packages as normal user (Remember: not root user).

mkdir ~/tmp

Go to that directory and download and install Cower as shown below.

cd ~/tmp/

gpg --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu 1EB2638FF56C0C53

curl -o PKGBUILD https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/plain/PKGBUILD?h=cower

makepkg -i PKGBUILD --noconfirm

Then, download and install Pacaur package.

curl -o PKGBUILD https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/plain/PKGBUILD?h=pacaur

makepkg -i PKGBUILD --noconfirm

Finally, cleanup the temporary working directory:

cd

rm -r ~/tmp

Usage

Like I said already, Pacaur supports all pacman operations (such as -S, -Ss, -Si, -Sw, -Su, -Qu, -Sc, -Scc) and by default extends respectively its sync, search, info, download only, system upgrade, upgrades check, clean and clean all functions to the AUR. However, this extension behavior is optional and can be disabled with the fallback variable in the config file.

To install a package, run:

pacaur -S <package-name>

To update a package:

pacaur -u <package-name>

Also, you can update the packages from both official repositories and AUR using command:

pacaur -Syyu

To update the packages only from AUR, run:

pacaur -u --noconfirm

For more details about Pacaur, refer man pages.

man pacaur

Also Read: How To Speed Up Compilation Process When Installing Packages From AUR

And, that's all for today. Hope you find this guide useful. We will be posting more useful guides every day. Keep visiting.

Cheers!

Resource:

• Pacaur GitHub repository