Arch Linux Packaging

Distributed Design

The Arch Linux project encourages and empowers users to create their own software packages.

• The package manager pacman is designed to mix and match official binary packages with unofficial, locally compiled packages.

• Packages are never split between software and development headers.
• Build options and flags are coordinated through system configuration packages.
• Tools for isolated build processes are well tested and documented.

The Arch Linux project also supports code for running public and private mirrors of the official binary packages.

PKGBUILD

A PKGBUILD is a shell script to build a software package installable by pacman(8). The shell script is called by the makepkg(8) utility.

A PKGBUILD...

• mandatorily defines the pkgname, pkgver, pkgrel, and arch variables

• defines dependencies as an array variable, wherein each element is a package name with versioning constraints

  • try: depends=('foobar>=1.8.0' 'foobar<2.0.0')

• defines well-known functions that will be called by makepkg(8)

  • prepare applies patches to the source code

  • build calls the build pipeline, including any configuration steps

  • check calls the test suite

  • package creates the package

It's also possible to specify build-time dependencies with the makedepends variable (same format as depends), test suite dependencies with the checkdepends variables (again, same format), and optional (feature gate) dependencies with the optdepends variable (try: optdepends=('cups: printing support')).

If a package provides software that may be depended upon by other packages, set the provides array variable accordingly. Try: provides=('foobar=1.2.3').

makepkg

The makepkg(8) utility uses PKGBUILD scripts to build a package.

To build a package, try:

makepkg

To install all of a package's dependencies, built it, and install it, try:

makepkg --syncdeps --install

To build a source code only package (a tarball that does not include sources that can be fetched via a download URL), try:

makepkg -S

makepkg(8) is configured with makepkg.conf(5) and through environment variables. In particular, these variables are often configured:

makechrootpkg

The makechrootpkg(8) utility builds packages in a clean chroot.

The chroot must first be setup like:

mkdir ~/chroot
export CHROOT=$HOME/chroot
mkarchroot $CHROOT/root base-devel

To keep the chroot up-to-date, run:

arch-nspawn $CHROOT/root pacman -Syu

Lastly, build packages with:

makechrootpkg -c -r $CHROOT

Arch User Repository

The AUR (Arch User Repository) is a public git repository of user-created and user-maintained PKGBUILD scripts.

The AUR is chiefly a way to coordinate the distribution of non-free and closed source applications on Arch Linux. Because a PKGBUILD script itself does not contain copyrighted material, they can be distributed freely and developed as open source code.

While these PKGBUILD scripts can be cloned and used directly, there are a number of 'AUR helpers' that automate this process. See pacaur, paru, pikaur, trizen, yaourt, and yay.

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