TOPIC: XZ UTILS
Adding Software to Arch Linux from the AUR
3rd December 2011There are packages absent from the Arch Linux repositories that could come in useful. When you are after one of these, then it's time to search the Arch User Repository (AUR). In here, I have found the likes of Microsoft Core Fonts, Adobe Reader and Dropbox. While there may be others, these examples are what comes to mind as I write this. In time, it may be that packages make if from the AUR into the Arch community repository, but you have to use the former if you cannot wait.
Just search the AUR for what you want and download the compressed tarball (tar.gz file) from the webpage where you find it. Then, I recommend extracting it to /tmp where clearance at boot time means that you don't need to do it yourself. Then, go into the appropriate subfolder in /tmp (acroread for Adobe Reader, for instance) and issue the following command:
makepkg
This will attempt to create a package file where you are working for installation by pacman. If dependencies are absent, you will be told and these may need another AUR search in some cases, though most are included in the repositories. Once dependencies, have been sorted, just issue the makepkg command again to create the xz file that pacman needs to perform the installation. To do so, issue the following command from the same directory either as root or by using sudo if your user account has such privileges:
pacman -U *.xz
There is usually just one xz archive in a package folder, so I have been taking the easy route of not looking up the name all the time. Of course, you can do that for safety if you like.
With pacman not looking at the AUR, you have to do more work to get upgrades to happen should you want to avoid without having to repeat the above process all the time. There is a package in the AUR called yaourt that needs package-query from the same place as well. Before any of these, yajl needs to be installed from one of the default repositories. Once yaourt is in place, then the following does the updates for you:
yaourt -Syu --aur
Again, it might be best to run this as root or using sudo though that gives messages from makepkg about not running it as a privileged user. However, I reckon that those might need to be ignored. When I tried it, the Citrix update failed, though the Dropbox one succeeded. This experience might be worth bearing in mind. Saying that, I have found installing and updating software from the AUR not to be too onerous a process so far. Anything that gives a little more freedom only can be a good thing.
A fallback installation routine?
9th November 2007In a previous sustained spell of Linux meddling, the following installation routine was one that I encountered rather too often when RPM's didn't do what I required of them (having a SUSE distro in a world dominated by a Red Hat standard didn't make things any easier...):
tar xzvf progname.tar.gz; cd progname
The first part of the command extracts from a tarball compressed using gzip and the second one changes into the new directory created by the extraction. For files compressed with bzip use:
tar xjvf progname.tar.bz2; cd progname
The command below configures, compiles and installs the package, running the last part of the command in its own shell.
./configure; make; su -c make install
Yes, the procedure is a bit convoluted, but it would have been fine if it always worked. My experience was that the process was a far from foolproof one. For instance, an unsatisfied dependency is all that is needed to stop you in your tracks. Attempting to install a GNOME application on a KDE-based system is as good a way to encounter this result as any. Other horrid errors also played havoc with hopeful plans from time to time.
It shouldn't surprise you to find that I will be staying away from the compilation/installation business with my main Ubuntu system. Synaptic Package Manager and its satisfactory dependency resolution fulfil my needs well and there is the Update Manager too; I'll be leaving it for Canonical to do the testing and make the decisions regarding what is ready for my PC as they maintain their software repositories. My past tinkering often created a mess, and I'll be leaving that sort of experimentation for the safe confines of a virtual machine from now on...