I’m planning to install Arch Linux for the first time. Any recommendations on setup, must-have applications, or best practices? Also, what’s something you wish you knew before switching to Arch?
I’m planning to install Arch Linux for the first time. Any recommendations on setup, must-have applications, or best practices? Also, what’s something you wish you knew before switching to Arch?
Ya. Ok. But pacman does not let you use the AUR. Using the AUR is one did the primary reasons to choose Arch.
So, if you want to use the AUR, you need to use something like yay or paru. And, if you do, you no longer need to use pacman.
To be clear to the newbies, pacman -Syu updates your entire system ( except packages from the AUR ). yay -Syu updates your entire system, including packages from the AUR.
If you just ran yay -Syu, running pacman -Syu will report that there is “nothing to do” since your system will already be up to date.
The same is true if you sub paru for yay above.
You definitely do not need to use any pacman wrappers to build a package from the AUR. Those tools make it easy, yes, but are not required.
Building a package can be as simple as
git clone AURpackageherecd AURpackageheremakepkg -siUm. Ya, I guess. Ok.
First, how do you keep that package up to date?
Real question though is, do you really think that is better than “yay -S AURpackagehere” or even “paru AURpackagehere”?
To update the package, you use git to pull the latest branch code and repeat the process. You should double check if there are dependency changes though.
Like I said, its easier with a pacman wrapper, but not necessary.
Yes. Thank you. My question (or point) was how you know that the package needs to be updated? As you point out, I need to do that for dependencies as well.
You are certainly correct though. You can pull AUR packages and build them without yay or paru.
Per the Arch Wiki:
Arch Wiki - Arch User Repository