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

sudo aura -S firefox

💡 Note: Like with pacman, sudo must be used for all "admin" actions.

Update all official packages

The classic command.

sudo aura -Syu

Install a package built with makepkg

sudo 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.

sudo aura -Rsu firefox

The package and everything that depends on it

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

sudo aura -Rcu firefox

Querying your System

Searching an exact package

aura -Qi firefox

Searching a local package by description

> aura -Qs browser
local/chromium 83.0.4103.61-1
    A web browser built for speed, simplicity, and security
local/firefox 76.0.1-1
    Standalone web browser from mozilla.org
local/qt5-webengine 5.14.2-3 (qt qt5)
    Provides support for web applications using the Chromium browser project

Producing a list of installed packages

> aura -Q
a52dec 0.7.4-11
aalib 1.4rc5-14
accounts-qml-module 0.7-2
acetoneiso2 2.3-10
... etc ...

Discovering what package owns a certain file

> aura -Qo /usr/bin/firefox
/usr/bin/firefox is owned by firefox 76.0.1-1

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

Clearing your Package Cache

Pacman and Aura store 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.

Removing the tarballs of uninstalled packages

sudo aura -Sc

Removing all tarballs

sudo aura -Scc