(un)Installing Packages From The (AUR) Arch Linux User Repository

Key Takeaways

what's up guys I am going to look at the aur today so I just recently downloaded some packages from the aur because well I wanted to have my favorite code I des I didn't want to rely solely on them for all my development I like some things about like vs code in our studio for some of my other coding type work and plus they also have a VIN mode so it's not all bad but what's the aur so the aur is the RT Linux user repository which hosts a lot of user hosted packages so a lot of programs and applications things that have been configured to work with arch that are maintained by the users and it's not in the official repository I guess correct me if I'm wrong but all the packages that are here are hosted by users and there are my face is covering the stats there are no 55 and a half thousand packages these are user hosted packages which means that as I say here they are to be used at your own risk which means that when you download the git repos with all the files in it you need to make sure you read everything or glance over it and make sure there's nothing malicious in it but usually they're probably gonna get caught real quick for anything malicious but anywho so that's the aur and I just recently did my first few programs in this so I have figured out how to download the applications and get them working I'll show you what I did with some scripts to make things work but I downloaded my packages and I'm gonna do one from scratch so hopefully this works and doesn't blow up on me live but I did our studio and vs code but yeah so here's what a package on the aur looks like you have this page I'm looking at like slack desktop I'm not gonna use the desktop application the GUI in Turkey I'm actually gonna try and use slack term for a terminal application of slack because I actually have a group free code camp code group I can go to four meetups and we all talk on slacks so I want to continue using that even if it is proprietary so what but here's the page so what you do to get a package from the aur on your machine working and have programs and things so I go to this page or a page on the aur you find this link the get link copy that and then we go to our terminal to make excuse me a directory so I already have a directory for programs from the aur they have to be I think it's manually compiled I think that's what the terminology is but you can see I have a file folder here called programs so I'm gonna go to programs and in there I have like our studio and BS code so we're gonna make a clone of that repo link that I copied so we're just going to do get clone shift insert and paste that URL in there and we're gonna clone this git repo with all the files in it so all it's doing that and it's done all right so now we have the repo installed so if I LS we can see it's slack desktop it's in there so what we do next is we make the package we do make package with the SI options I installs the package we're not using pac-man because it's from the aur but we install the package and then we do s for syncing all the dependencies so if there's anything it needs it downloads those as well so this is the install and make process after this I'll show you the uninstall process and hopefully that doesn't blow up on e so we're gonna do make package - si I think you have to shift a CD into the directory oops just like a stop and then make oh wait because yeah because it's just the package build file which actually if we're following the best practice I would then open that up and I would actually review this and I would look at all these things and make sure that none of the links go to any malicious sources and nothing looks sketchy which you know at first glance I don't really know how it half the stuff is here so I'm just gonna say this is probably good and my computer probably won't blow up I have backups anyways check out my arcing video for that but now we're in the directory for the the git repo that was still as you can see we got to get stuff in there but we have the git repo and where you have the package package filled file so now we're just gonna do make package with the sync and install options and it will work I have to enter my password for this yes I want to install these things and so it showed me the lib curl dependency so now it's also going to install that to make sure that all this stuff works so this actually might take a little bit and we'll come back when this is over so the package finished installing weirdly enough it did ask me to install it with pac-man and everything I'm not sure why ignore that and pretended like it didn't happen because it doesn't change anything else in the workflow so what we did we downloaded the git repo with the link into a directory and I have IE programs directory for aur programs I put the git repo in there I entered the repository with CD and then I did the command make package with the sni options for sync dependencies and install so once this is done once this is done the package is made all the files are sent out I guess like I'm all I need to do now is type the name of the binary script the script that opens up the programs so in this case that would be slack and it should open I tested this a couple there we go so there there's the application that's what we need to know now what if you have an application with a very long name or something you just don't it's just not a script that's in a in an area that is easily findable so one thing I did is I actually wrote my own scripts to call my applications so you can see right now that in this terminal the script is I call the application might already exist like when I installed our studio and vs code when I did the make package it might have already made a binary script that would actually they don't call the application open it like it did right here with slack but then you can see the terminal is still currently thinking it's an active terminal this program is bound to this terminal I wanted to completely detach the application from the terminal and make it so that the terminal can do other things now like it's not bound to this I disowned the application from the terminal but I also wanted the terminal to just close because I don't want to have to then click any more keys and close the terminal after and typing in the name of the script the application and then have it open and then have the terminal here I wanted to have just just type in the name of the application close terminal open application which is what I did so if you can see I'm gonna close that and it you know I close the terminal but it closed the application because they're still bound there's other I had to not disown it so what I did as you can see right here our studio so this is the name of the script I wrote just the name of the application our studio because I'm no I'm not gonna forget that ah terminal closed application opens it's a distant it's a disown process so the terminal opens it disowns from the terminal and closes the terminal how did I do that I wrote scripts for this and vs code to do that let's see CD you're actually just been and then our studio they're super simple I call the name of the binary so actually this is one I did not want to have to type - bin for this binary to run I mean sure I could have renamed it but you know just gonna deal with the package and the way it was it was made so I didn't want to actually have to type out our studio - bin so I just want to do our studio the ampersand actually ends the process so that way the terminal can do other thing so the terminal is still open but it's not you know solely focused on the application it opened it I can you know CD into another directory type stuff whatever but I also wanted the terminal to close so what this little piece here this is a shameless copy pasta from Stack Overflow is that this will get the parent ID of yeah something to do with parent IDs and process parent process something ID and uses off to get some forth value whatever what I know is that it works I mean generally I have an idea of what it's doing it's not delete system D or to window windows 32 or whatever system 32 but yes this closes the parent process which is the terminal and therefore it opens my application and closes the terminal which is exactly what I wanted so I can close this I can say vs code because I just have a copypasta of that for just 4 vs code and it will open vs code this is exactly what I wanted so now I have a template to do this for all my applications now I don't want a slack on here I can close that I don't want slack on this computer I wanted to select term because I want the terminal application not the actual GUI application so I want to uninstall slack and all its associated files in one go supposedly we're gonna see if it works live pac-man - capital R for remove n and s for recursive and no save are supposed to be the options to completely just remove something completely from your system so let's check this out slack desktop pac-man prior to run this is sudo will see R and s slack - desktop yep sudo so suit and my password there we go so remember earlier it actually had to dis install this dependency and here's the actual program that is the file size because it did make me download it through pac-man but this is exactly what it should do so let's see I remove it all excellent so let's go I want to see two programs select desktop is still in there but let's see what's actually in there oh so it's still in there so it did not completely remove it maybe it removed it from the system oh it's right I remember reading that the actual files in the directory you have here you have to manually remove so that's fine just remove the directory you recursive with the directive the directory recursively just remove that and we're all good so if I call select though it should not appear because it should have removed the binary yes all right so then I can just get out of here remove recursively oh yeah yeah yeah slack desktop do it anyways sudo yay there we go all done so that was how to completely install and uninstall a aur package I did my little binding of the our scripts to the applications because I wanted things my way and that's how I like it but that's it there you go see you next time