AUR.">paru is an aur helper that allows you to use a package manager to install packages from the aur.
What’s the Aur ¶ #
The Aur is a set of community managed packages that can be installed on arch based distros.
Why a helper? ¶ #
paru just makes it easy, no clone and run makepkg. You can do everything paru can do using the built in pacman installer.
Manual Install from the Aur ¶ #
You will need to manually instal pacman from the aur in order to get started.
sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git
cd paru
makepkg -si
Installing packages with paru ¶ #
Once setup you are ready to install packages from the AUR just like the core repos.
# you can update your system using paru
paru -Syu
# you can install packages from the AUR
paru -S tailscale
paru -S prismlauncher
# even core repo packages can be installed
paru -S docker
Paru in Docker ¶ #
Here is a snippet from my devtainer dockerfile. Where I use paru to install packages from the AUR inside of a dockerfile.
FROM archlinux
RUN echo '[multilib]' >> /etc/pacman.conf && \
echo 'Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist' >> /etc/pacman.conf && \
pacman --noconfirm -Syyu && \
pacman --noconfirm -S base-devel git && \
groupadd --gid 1000 devtainer && \
useradd --uid 1000 --gid 1000 -m -r -s /bin/bash devtainer && \
passwd -d devtainer && \
echo 'devtainer ALL=(ALL) ALL' > /etc/sudoers.d/devtainer && \
mkdir -p /home/devtainer/.gnupg && \
echo 'standard-resolver' > /home/devtainer/.gnupg/dirmngr.conf && \
chown -R devtainer:devtainer /home/devtainer && \
mkdir /build && \
chown -R devtainer:devtainer /build && \
cd /build && \
sudo -u devtainer git clone --depth 1 https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git && \
cd paru && \
sudo -u devtainer makepkg --noconfirm -si && \
sed -i 's/#RemoveMake/RemoveMake/g' /etc/paru.conf && \
pacman -Qtdq | xargs -r pacman --noconfirm -Rcns && \
rm -rf /home/devtainer/.cache && \
rm -rf /build
USER devtainer
RUN sudo -u devtainer paru --noconfirm --skipreview --useask -S \
bat \
cargo \
direnv \
dua-cli \
dust \
fd
Final Thoughts ¶ #
There are other options out there, paru seemed to be the most supported at the time I started using arch and there has been no other reason for me to change it. It’s treated me well for nearly a year now.