Aura-as-Pacman

aura can be used in place of pacman in all situations. At the very least, this is two fewer letters to type!

Below are some common pacman idioms for managing your system. The list is a handy reference but not exhaustive. For everything that pacman is capable of, see man pacman.

To find out how to use Aura to interact with the AUR, continue to the next page.

Package Installation and Updates

Install an official package

aura -S firefox

💡 Note: Unlike with pacman, prefixing with sudo is not necessary for "admin" actions. Aura knows when sudo is necessary and will prompt you.

Update all official packages

The classic command.

aura -Syu

Install a package built with makepkg

aura -U foobar-1.2.3-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

Removing Packages

The package and all unneeded dependencies

From the manpage of pacman:

This operation is recursive and analogous to a backwards --sync operation, and it helps keep a clean system without orphans.

aura -Rsu firefox

The package and everything that depends on it

Use this with care. See man pacman for more details.

aura -Rcu firefox

Querying your System

Searching an exact package

aura -Qi firefox

Searching a local package by description

> aura -Qs browser
local/firefox 127.0.2-1
    Fast, Private & Safe Web Browser
local/mathjax 3.2.2-1
    An open source JavaScript display engine for mathematics that works in all modern browsers
local/qt6-webengine 6.7.2-1 (qt6)
    Provides support for web applications using the Chromium browser project

Producing a list of installed packages

> aura -Q
aalib 1.4rc5-18
abcl 1.9.2-1
abseil-cpp 20240116.2-2
acl 2.3.2-1
... etc ...

Discovering what package owns a certain file

> aura -Qo firefox
/usr/bin/firefox is owned by firefox 127.0.2-1

Discovering which files are brought in by a package

> aura -Ql firefox
firefox /usr/
firefox /usr/bin/
firefox /usr/bin/firefox
firefox /usr/lib/
firefox /usr/lib/firefox/
firefox /usr/lib/firefox/Throbber-small.gif
firefox /usr/lib/firefox/application.ini
... etc ...

You can use grep to filter what you're looking for:

> aura -Ql firefox | grep bin
firefox /usr/bin/
firefox /usr/bin/firefox
firefox /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin

Listing all installed "foreign" packages

> aura -Qm
abcl 1.9.2-1
anki 2.1.66-1
babashka-bin 1.3.191-1
bashate 2.1.1-1
ccextractor 0.94-3
ccl 1.12.2-4
... etc ...

Clearing your Package Cache

Pacman stores its built packages in /var/cache/pacman/pkg/. This directory can grow quite large, but the following commands can help selectively clear it.

💡 Tip: The Aura command -Cc offers additional control over clearing the cache, and targets Aura's cache as well.

Removing the tarballs of uninstalled packages

aura -Sc

Removing all tarballs

aura -Scc