The Aura Package Manager

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Welcome to the main repository for Aura, a secure, multilingual package manager for Arch Linux.

Check out The Aura Book for all knowledge and usage instructions!

Table of Contents

• Aura
  • What is Aura?
  • The Aura Philosophy
    • Aura is Pacman
    • Arch is Arch - AUR is AUR
    • Secure Package Building
    • Downgradibility
    • Arch Linux for Everyone
    • Haskell
  • Installation
    • Prebuilt Binaries
    • Building from Source
  • Sample Usage
    • Installing Packages
    • Package Set Snapshots
    • Downgrading via the Package Cache
    • Searching the Pacman Log
    • Managing Orphan Packages
    • PKGBUILD Security Analysis
  • Configuration
  • Mailing List
  • Localisation
  • Credits
• The aur Haskell Library
• The aursec Tool

Aura is a package manager for Arch Linux. Its original purpose is as an AUR helper, in that it automates the process of installing packages from the Arch User Repositories. It is, however, capable of much more.

Aura doesn't just mimic pacman; it is pacman. All pacman operations and their sub-options are allowed. Some even hold special meaning in Aura as well.

-S yields pacman packages and only pacman packages. This agrees with the above. In Aura, the -A operation is introduced for obtaining AUR packages. -A comes with sub-options you're used to (-u, -s, -i, etc.).

PKGBUILDs from the AUR can contain anything. It's a user's responsibility to verify the contents of a PKGBUILD before building, but people can make mistakes and overlook details. Aura scans PKGBUILDs before building to detect bash misuse and other exploits. The -P command is also provided for scanning your own PKGBUILDs.

Also, while pre-build PKGBUILD editing is not default behaviour, this can be achieved with --hotedit.

Aura allows you to downgrade individual packages to previous versions with -C. It also handles snapshots of your entire system, so that you can roll back whole sets of packages when problems arise. The option -B will save a package state, and -Br will restore a state you select. -Su and -Au also invoke a save automatically.

English is the dominant language of computing and the internet. That said, it's natural that some people are going to be more comfortable working in their native language. From the beginning, Aura has been built with multiple-language support in mind, making it very easy to add new ones.

Aura is written in Haskell, which means easy development and beautiful code. Please feel free to use it as a Haskell reference. Aura code demonstrates:

• Parser combinators (megaparsec)
• CLI flag handling (optparse-applicative)
• Concurrency (scheduler)
• Shell interaction (typed-process)
• Pretty printing (prettyprinter)
• Logging (rio)
• Modern Haskell project architecture (config, CI, distribution)

It is recommended to install the prebuilt binary of Aura:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/aura-bin.git
cd aura-bin
makepkg
sudo pacman -U <the-package-file-that-makepkg-produces>

You will need the Stack Tool for Haskell to compile Aura yourself. Then:

git clone https://github.com/fosskers/aura.git
cd aura/haskell
stack install -- aura

This may take a while to initially build all of Aura's dependencies. Once complete, your aura binary will be available in /home/YOU/.local/bin/.

Alteratively, you can try the Alpha of Aura's new version:

cd rust
cargo install --path .

This will install the binary to /home/YOU/.cargo/bin/.

Full usage information can be found in Aura's man page.

Orphan packages are those whose install reason is marked as "As Dependency", but are not actually depended upon by any installed package.

As mentioned above, the -P commands can help us detect bash usage that conflicts with the AUR guidelines, as well as outright exploits.

Aura looks for a configuration file at /etc/aura.conf, but won't break if one isn't present. A template config file can be found here and contains all instructions. If you install Aura via its AUR package, this file is added for you.

You can join Aura's mailing list here: https://lists.sr.ht/~fosskers/aura

As mentioned in the Philosophy above, adding new languages to Aura is quite easy. If you speak a language other than those available and would like it added to Aura, please see the Localisation section of The Aura Book.

Aura has been translated by these generous people:

Aura's logo is thanks to the designer Cristiano Vitorino.

A library for accessing the AUR.

Performs a sweep of all PKGBUILDs on the AUR, looking for Bash misuse.