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Pacman Basics

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A bit about Pacman

Pacman has been around for over twenty years, and was released in March of 2002, along with the Arch Linux distribution, which SDesk, EndeavourOS, Manjaro, and many other distributions are based on. Since then, it has evolved into one of the largest, fastest, and one of the most diverse package managers available for any Linux distribution as of writing. Unlike most package managers, which use their very own formats for their packages, Pacman uses the bsdtar format, which can make it easier for other package managers to be compatible with it.

Building Packages

If the desired package is not in any official repository, you have two options:

• Build it from scratch (Keep reading to find out how)
• Use the “yay“ AUR helper if the package is in the AUR (Keep reading to find out how)

IMPORTANT:

NEVER run the makepkg command or the yay command as root, it can cause permanent damage at the system level if you were to build and install a malicious package.

The folder you are in MUST contain a directory called “PKGBUILD”

To build a package from scratch:

makepkg -s

To build a package from scratch AND install it:

makepkg -si

To build a package from scratch without installing dependencies:

makepkg

To build a package from scratch without installing dependencies and skipping the integrity check (Not recommended, though sometimes it is the only option):

makepkg [Other arguments] —skip-integ

To install the “yay” AUR helper (Will not work on vanilla Arch, confirmed to work with EndeavourOS and SDesk):

sudo pacman -S yay

To install a package from the AUR:

yay -S [Package name here]

To remove a package from the AUR:

yay -R [Package name here]

You can find officially stocked packages on the Arch Website or the SDesk Package Repository.

You can also find a list of packages maintained by users like you on the AUR.

Written by: Stephen Byrne