Installing programs from the AUR

AUR: Arch Linux User-Community Repository homepageAUR: Arch Linux User-Community Repository homepageFound a program that isn't in the repos? First, you should check out the Arch User Repositories (AUR). They are programs put into a PKGBUILD which eases the installation for you. Let's say I want to install yaourt, a frontend to pacman with AUR support. First, I navigate to

http://aur.archlinux.org

Searching the AUR: Looking for "yaourt" in the AURSearching the AUR: Looking for "yaourt" in the AURThis is the main page for the AUR. Now, click on "Packages" at the top, next to a few other links. Now type in what you want in the input box labeled "Keywords". I will type in "yaourt". Find yaourt in the search results. Now click on the link "Tarball". Navigate to the directory you downloaded it to and extract it. Now open up a terminal. cd to it (for example, if my extracted folder is on the desktop: cd ~/Desktop/yaourt Now type in "makepkg -s". This will solve all dependencies for you using pacman. If all is well it should work. When it is finished, as root type: pacman -U <insert name of pkg.tar.gz file> Your program should now be installed! So to sum this up:

  1. Browse to http://aur.archlinux.org
  2. Search for your program's page
  3. Download the tar.gz file containing all required files
  4. Uncompress the tar.gz file, cd to the extracted directory and type in 'makepkg -s'. This will also install any missing dependencies with pacman
  5. When it is finished, type in 'pacman -U <insert name of program and version>.pkg.tar.gz
  6. Your program is installed!

Yaourt can highly simplify this by doing most of the above for you. You can do things like pacman, and it also has coloured output!

http://archlinux.fr/yaourt-en

Installing things from the AUR is as easy as installing from the repos: yaourt -S <insert package name here> It works just like pacman with added features. For more information on using pacman, look here: Using Pacman