aurutils installation and configuration

This is not a getting started guide, just notes to myself. Due to my limited knowledge there could be mistakes and better ways to do things. I have configured aurutils to the best of my knowledge after reading the manpages and forums. Please refer to aurutils(7) manpages for installation and configuration.

Reference: aurutils(7)

Install aurutils

Install the aurutils using the normal AUR package installation procedure. Until I found aurutils, I used to create a separate directory ~/aur/ for all AUR packages.

$ cd ~/aur
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/aurutils.git
$ cd aurutils-git
$ makepkg -si

Creating local repository

Create a separate pacman configuration file for the custom repository in /etc/pacman.d/

$ sudo nano /etc/pacman.d/aur-packages

Add the lines in the file /etc/pacman.d/aur-packages:

[options]
CacheDir = /var/cache/pacman/pkg
CacheDir = /var/cache/pacman/aur-pkgs
CleanMethod = KeepCurrent

[aur-packages]
SigLevel = Optional TrustAll
Server = file:///var/cache/pacman/aur-pkgs

Add the following lines for the custom repository configuration to the end of /etc/pacman.conf

Include = /etc/pacman.d/aur-packages

Create the repository root in /var/cache/pacman

sudo install -d /var/cache/pacman/aur-pkgs -o $USER

Create the database in /var/cache/pacman/aur-pkgs/

repo-add /var/cache/pacman/custom/aur-pkgs.db.tar

If you already have built packages from AUR using makepkg -si, copy/move all the *.pkg.tar.zstd files to /var/cache/pacman/aur-pkgs/ and

$ cd /var/cache/pacman/aur-pkgs
$ repo-add -n aur-pkgs.db.tar *.pkg.tar.zstd

Then synchronize pacman:

$ sudo pacman -Syu

Install packages

For example we want to install spleen-font from AUR. Use aursync to download and build AUR package and place it in the custom repository. Then use pacman -S packagename to install the package.

$ aursync spleen-font
$ sudo pacman -S spleen-font

Build and update all installed AUR packages

Update all installed AUR packages with aursync

aur sync -u