SYNOPSIS
aura OPERATION [OPTIONS ...] [targets ...]
DESCRIPTION
aura is a secure, multilingual package manager for Arch Linux
written in Haskell. It connects to both the official Arch
repositories and to the Arch User Repositories (AUR), allow‐
ing easy control of all packages on an Arch system. Aura al‐
lows all pacman operations and provides new custom ones for
dealing with AUR packages.
OPERATIONS
-A, --aursync [packages ...]
Perform actions involving the AUR. Default action in‐
stalls packages from the AUR.
During building, makepkg output is not shown by de‐
fault. After building, the built *.pkg.tar.xz file is
moved to the package cache and installed from there.
This allows for easy AUR package downgrading.
-B, --save
Manage the saving and restoring of the global package
state. Default action stores a record of all cur‐
rently installed packages and their versions.
-C, --downgrade [packages ...]
Perform actions involving the package Cache. Default
action downgrades specified packages.
This process is interactive, allowing the user to
choose from any previous version they have available
in the package cache.
-L, --viewlog
Perform actions involving the pacman Logfile. Default
action opens the log for read-only viewing.
-O, --orphans [packages ...]
Perform actions involving Orphan packages. Default
action is to list the current orphans.
Orphan packages are packages installed as dependen‐
cies, but are no longer required by any other package.
-P, --analysis
Perform security analysis of a PKGBUILD. Default ac‐
tion reads PKGBUILD from stdin.
Useful for package maintainers and sysadmins to verify
the safety of the PKGBUILD files that they write. To
test any package on the AUR, try the following:
aura -Ap package | aura -P
AUR SYNC OPTIONS (-A)
-a, --delmakedeps
Uninstalls build dependencies that are no longer re‐
quired after installing the main package. This pre‐
vents the creation of orphan packages. Also note that
while the package itself will be uninstalled, its
package file will remain in the cache.
-c, --clean
After a package's tarball has been built and copied to
the package cache, delete its build directory immedi‐
ately.
-d, --deps packages ...
View all dependencies of packages. This process is
recursive for AUR packages, so all dependencies of de‐
pendencies (and so on) will also be shown. This can
aid the pre-install package research process.
-i, --info packages ...
View information about AUR packages.
-k, --diff
Show PKGBUILD diffs. When upgrading, using this op‐
tion will compare the most and second-most recent PKG‐
BUILDs and output changes in colour.
-p, --pkgbuild packages ...
View PKGBUILDs of AUR packages. Use this before in‐
stalling new packages to confirm that the build
scripts aren't doing anything fishy.
-q, --quiet
Display less information about certain -A operations
(this is useful when processing Aura's output in a
script). In particular, search and view dependencies
will only show uncoloured package names.
-s, --search word ...
Search AUR for packages containing words (not regex)
in their names or descriptions. Multiple terms will
narrow down the search. Results are sorted by votes.
Suboptions:
--abc Sorts results alphabetically.
--head[=N]
Only show the first N results. N defaults to
10.
--tail[=N]
Only show the last N results. N defaults to
10.
--tail[=N]
Only show the last N results. N defaults to
10.
-r, --both
Show results from the official repos as well.
-u, --sysupgrade
Upgrade all installed AUR packages. -Au is like -Su
but for AUR packages.
-w, --downloadonly packages ...
Retrieve AUR packages source tarballs, but do not
build/install/upgrade anything.
-x, --unsuppress
Unsuppress makepkg(8) output during building. By de‐
fault this output is suppressed for a more silent in‐
stall. Note that when this option isn't used, makepkg
output is actually collected and printed if any errors
occur.
--json packages ...
Query the AUR RPC for packages info as raw JSON. Good
for debugging.
--build path
Specify build path when building AUR packages. Only
the full path of a pre-existing directory can be used.
Example:
aura -A foo --build=/full/path/to/build/location/
--builduser user
Specify the user to build packages as. This can be
useful when logged in as root and a build user is
available.
-devel
When ran with -Au, adds all development packages to
the queue of packages to upgrade. Devel packages are
those pulled directly from online repositories, via
git / mercurial / etc.
--dryrun
When ran with -A or -Au, update checks, PKGBUILD
diffs, and dependency checks will be performed, but
nothing will be built. Also usable with -M.
--force
Always (re)build the specified packages. Usually Aura
will not rebuild packages whose versions are already
available in the local package cache.
--hotedit
Before building, prompt the user if they wish to
view/edit the PKGBUILD, as well as any .install or
.patch files. However, research into packages (and by
extension, their PKGBUILDs) should be done by the user
before any building occurs. Please use -Ap and -Ad
for this, as they will be much faster at presenting
information than searching the AUR website manually.
Note that, since aura is run through sudo, your local
value of $EDITOR may not be preserved. Run as “sudo
-E aura -A --hotedit ...” to preserve your environ‐
ment. To always allow environment variables to be
passed, have a look at the env_reset and env_keep op‐
tions in sudoers(5).
--skipdepcheck
Perform no dependency solving. Consider this when us‐
ing --hotedit to avoid building annoying dependencies
that aren't necessary for your special use-case.
--vcspath path
Save the cloned sources of VCS packages (i.e. those
that end in *-git, etc.) in the given path, instead of
the default /var/cache/aura/vcs/.
GLOBAL PACKAGE STATE OPTIONS (-B)
-c, --clean states-to-retain
Retains a given number of the most recently saved
package states and removes the rest.
-r, --restore
Restores a record kept with -B. Attempts to downgrade
any packages that were upgraded since the chosen save.
Will remove any that weren't installed at the time.
-l, --list
Show all saved package state filenames.
DOWNGRADE OPTIONS (-C)
-b, --backup path
Backup the package cache to a given directory. The
given directory must already exist. During copying,
progress will be shown. If the copy takes too long,
you may want to reduce the number of older versions of
each package by using -Cc.
-c, --clean versions-to-retain
Retains a given number of package versions for each
package, and deletes the rest from the package cache.
Count is made from the most recent version, so using:
aura -Cc 3
would save the three most recent versions of each
package file. Giving the number 0 as an argument is
identical to -Scc.
--notsaved
Remove only those package files which are not saved in
a package record (a la -B).
-s, --search regex
Search the package cache via a regex. Any package
name that matches the regex will be output as-is.
LOGFILE OPTIONS (-L)
-i, --info packages ...
Displays install/upgrade history for given packages.
Under the “Recent Actions” section, only the last five
entries will be displayed. If there are less than
five actions ever performed with the package, what is
available will be printed.
-s, --search regex
Search the pacman log file via a regex. Useful for
singling out any and all actions performed on a pack‐
age.```
ORPHAN PACKAGE OPTIONS (-O)
-a, --adopt packages ...
Mark packages as being explicitly installed (i.e. it's
not a dependency).
-j, --abandon
Uninstall all orphan packages.
ANALYSIS OPTIONS (-P)
-f, --file path
Analyse a PKGBUILD at the specified path.
-d, --dir path
Analyse a path/PKGBUILD found in the specified direc‐
tory.
-a, --audit
Analyse the PKGBUILDs of all locally installed AUR
packages.
PACMAN / AURA DUAL FUNCTIONALITY OPTIONS
--noconfirm
Never ask for any Aura or Pacman confirmation. Any
time a prompt would appear, say before building or in‐
stallation, it is assumed the user answered in what‐
ever way would progress the program.
--needed
Don't rebuild/reinstall packages that are already up
to date.
--debug
View some handy debugging information.
--color when
Specify when to enable colouring. Without this flag,
both Aura and Pacman will attempt to colour text if
the terminal allows it. Otherwise, you can pass al‐
ways or never to be specific about your wants.
--overwrite glob
If there are file conflicts during installation, over‐
write conflicting files that match the given glob pat‐
tern.
