Managing Packages

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: The document is currently being modified!

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Introduction

Managing packages on Arch Linux is honestly a joy to behold once it is fully understood. This is a collection of useful tips and tricks that I have picked up over the years using Arch.

Official Repositories

The Arch official repositories according to the ArchWiki contain "essential and popular software" and are maintained by the package maintainers that are part of the core Arch team. The official repositories are made up of core, extra, multilib and testing. Typically a user is already familiar with the first two, the third if you are a gamer (it is used to install 32-bit versions of libraries); but testing is usually new to a lot of users. The testing repository is used for testing packages that are soon to be migrated into one of the other repositories (ie. currently in testing).

Arch User Repositories (AUR)

The AUR (or Arch User Repositories) simply put, contain everything else. The AUR is a community-driven repository where users can contribute packages and/or vote on package submissions to be moved into the community repository. Normally access to packages in the AUR require the use of a 3rd party package utility or by building them manually, once moved into community they can be directly accessed over pacman or abs.

Some utilities for managing packages from the AUR include: aur:cower, aur:pacaur, aur:packer, aur:trizen, aur:yaourt

WARNING: Due to a security issue where files are sourced before giving the user a chance to interact, it is not recommeneded to use packer or yaourt.

I personally use pacaur and would also recommend the same to anyone.