Package management

The official Arch Linux repository contains more than 10k packages that can be installed with Pacman, the default package manager that is simple, yet very powerful:

Search and install package from official repository:

  pacman -Ss bitcoin # search a package
  pacman -S bitcoin # sync (install/update) a package

If your tool is not present in official Arch repo then we can try Arch Linux User Repo - AUR that has 60k more packages at your disposal to install using Rua. These are standard Arch packages, the only difference is that they are maintained by third-party users who might or might not be trusted.

Search and install a package from AUR repo:

  rua search monero # search for 'monero'
  rua install monero # install a package

And last, if your tool cannot be found in neither official Arch repo nor AUR then the last option is to install it from source code. But there is a catch: the classical ``configure, make, make install`` trinity works fine, the problem is the system pollution. After a while I find that I have hundreds of binaries installed in ``/usr/local/bin`` and I have no idea where they come from, let alone that a lot of tools do no provide an ``uninstall`` option and there is no easy way to clean up the system.

My solution is a combination of separate folder installation and a symlink manager called Stow. Lets take an example and install Libcaca from source code. ("caca" means poop in Romanian :), you might guess why I choose this lib to demo)

• Configure with prefix and install into separate folder:

    ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/libcaca

  After ``make, make install`` we end up with the following structure:

    ls -l /usr/local/stow/libcaca

  total	16
  drwxr-xr-x	2	icostan	users	4096	Aug	31	08:12	bin
  drwxr-xr-x	2	icostan	users	4096	Aug	31	08:12	include
  drwxr-xr-x	4	icostan	users	4096	Aug	31	08:12	lib
  drwxr-xr-x	3	icostan	users	4096	Aug	31	08:12	share

• Stow (aka symlink) ``libcaca`` package into ``/usr/local/``:

    stow --dir=/usr/local/stow --target=/usr/local/ --stow libcaca

  After Stow-ing we have nice and clean ``/usr/local/bin`` folder with symlinks only.

    ls -l /usr/local/bin

  total	4
  lrwxrwxrwx	1	root	root	29	Aug	31	08:18	cacaclock	->	../stow/libcaca/bin/cacaclock
  lrwxrwxrwx	1	root	root	28	Aug	31	08:18	cacademo	->	../stow/libcaca/bin/cacademo
  lrwxrwxrwx	1	root	root	28	Aug	31	08:18	cacafire	->	../stow/libcaca/bin/cacafire
  lrwxrwxrwx	1	root	root	28	Aug	31	08:18	cacaplay	->	../stow/libcaca/bin/cacaplay
  lrwxrwxrwx	1	root	root	30	Aug	31	08:18	cacaserver	->	../stow/libcaca/bin/cacaserver
  lrwxrwxrwx	1	root	root	28	Aug	31	08:18	cacaview	->	../stow/libcaca/bin/cacaview

Search locally installed packages and show package info:

  pacman -Qs bitcoin # search local package database
  pacman -Qi bitcoin # local package info

And one of my favorite, list all files in a package or find package ownership:

  pacman -Ql bitcoin # list all files installed by bitcoin package
  pacman -Qo /usr/bin/bitcoind # find the package that owns the specified file

We can query for all packages that are installed with different package manager like Rua:

  pacman -Qm

We can list Stow folder and see what we have installed:

  ls -l /usr/local/stow/

Remove an installed package:

  pacman -R bitcoin

All packages installed with Rua are standard Pacman packages and can be easily removed:

  pacman -R mackup

Cleaning up is as simple as:

• un-stow (aka remove symlinks) from ``/usr/local``

  stow -R libcaca

• delete the installation folder ``/usr/local/stow/libcaca``