#AUR Scripts

These are just scripts I use to make building AUR packages more convenient. Use case is as you would expect: fetch a PKGBUILD by cloning a git repo, then run makepkg.

#Warning

These scripts have to do with installing packages to your system. Never trust scripts from the Internet with that purpose unless you have personally vetted them thoroughly and find that they do what you expect.

I wrote these scripts with a very specific use case in mind: my own use case. I started with simply doing everything manually, then automated out only the parts I was comfortable with automating. I take steps to ensure my system's safety, but this is only apparent in my workflow as a whole. I don't find it hard to imagine someone else using these exact same scripts and somehow putting their system at risk simply because of a workflow mismatch.

That said, I see a value in making these scripts public. Perhaps one can learn to script their own AUR workflow from this repo. Perhaps one can yank out bits and pieces for their own use. Perhaps one even has a similar workflow to mine, taking the same care with interacting with the AUR as I do, and so can use these scripts for convenience.

I leave it to the user's good judgment. Caveat emptor.

#Pre-installation

These scripts are designed to work on an Arch Linux system.

The scripts require the following dependencies to work properly:

• bash
• env
• coreutils
• git (for aurget, aurupdate, and aurclean)
• makepkg (for aurinstall)
• less (for aurinstall)
• curl (for aurquery and aursearch)
• jq (for aurquery and aursearch)
• tput (for aurquery and aursearch)

#Installation

Copy or link the scripts to somewhere in your PATH.

#Usage

#Searching for Packages

A simple aursearch <keyword> will send a search query to the AUR's RPC interface.

Hint: it takes a -q/--quiet flag that acts in the same way as pacman's own -q/--quiet flag when running pacman -Ssq or pacman -Qsq. Fancy example: aurget "$(aursearch -q <keyword> | fzf)" to choose a package to fetch with a fuzzy finder.

aurquery <package> ... will send an info query to the AUR's RPC interface. It has more detailed output, similar to pacman -Si or pacman -Qi.

#Installing Packages

aurget <package> ... will clone the git repo(s) from the AUR to $AUR_DIR (defaults to ~/.aur). This ought to fetch the PKGBUILD, to prepare for installation.

aurinstall <package> ... will display the PKGBUILD in a pager for inspection, then run makepkg. Hint: default pager invocation is less -K, so you can press q to quit normally and proceed with installation, or press ctrl-c to abort (e.g. to prevent running a bad PKGBUILD). Also, it's just less so usual keys like v to open in an editor still work and can come in handy.

Hint: aurinstall --asdeps <package> ... will pass the --asdeps flag to makepkg (which will pass it, in turn, to pacman). This might prove useful in the case of installing packages only to fulfill dependencies, so they can automatically be removed by pacman -Rs, or properly detected as orphans by pacman -Qtd.

#Maintaining Packages

aurupdate <package> ... will simply run git fetch in the corresponding git repo(s), display any new commits on the remote, then attempt a git merge. If any new commits are displayed, a simple aurinstall <package> ... can be run to rebuild the package.

aurclean <package> ... will clean up any untracked files such as source tarballs and built packages, if freeing up disk space is a concern.

#Uninstalling Packages

Packages are installed with the traditional pacman -U invocation from makepkg, so uninstallation is done with pacman -Rns <package> ..., as expected.

aurremove <package> ... will simply delete the corresponding git repo(s) from $AUR_DIR. No package management operations are run; this is simply for housekeeping. Hint: this is just rm -rf on the repo (-r since it's a directory, -f to skip confirmation for various artifacts in .git). Tread lightly. You can easily do something dumb, like aurremove ../Documents.

#Other Usage

#Convenience Shell Functions

In some cases, the installation, update, and uninstallation steps are straightforward enough that almost no manual intervention between each script is necessary. A few convenience shell functions can really enhance the experience in these cases: see this Gist.

#Shell Completion

I personally use zsh, so I have some simple completion widgets for some of the scripts: see this Gist.

#Licensing

This project is free and open source software, licensed under the MIT license. You are free to use, modify, and redistribute this software.

See LICENSE for the full text. Also, take a look at Github's Choose a License page for a nice, short explanation.