I have a Steam Deck and I’ve been trying to install packages from AUR and have gotten nothing but endless errors trying to do so. The dependencies I want to install have dependencies which have dependencies which have dependencies.
So I’ve been having so many issues trying to install packages from AUR(or anywhere that isn’t the discover store via konsole). I’m coming from Windows where everything is a simple GUI installer and everything is easy to install.
My experience with Linux has unfortunately been a bit of a nightmare. I’ll search for a thread on how to install something, and generally the thread responses will have something akin to “just install it with yay or paru, then type this command”.
In my experience it has never been that simple. Installing yay or paru first have multiple dependencies, which I’ll run into numerous pacman errors, keyring errors, needing to add repos, etc.
Even worse, those dependencies have dependencies, which frequently then have a third or fourth level of recursion where those dependencies also have dependencies.
Something that I expected to take 2-5 minutes becomes a three to four hour nightmare of googling to find the various commands needed to get those installed, and then I’ll hit an issue where something like an invalid signature prevents a fourth level dependency required to install the original package without a solution that I can find, which basically means I just wasted 3-4 hours of my time.
And that has happened at least 5 times at this point with various software/programs.
So, a Decky plugin which adds all the required repos, installs a GUI AUR package manager such as Pamac, updates and verifies all the package keyring files needed to install something from AUR, installs all the possible dependencies that could be needed for AUR packages, installs the needed base devel packages(using this command: pacman -S --needed git base-devel), fixes signature has unknown trust issues;
Optionally removes the requirement/need to type sudo in front of any command(which has to be toggled with multiple warnings to prevent inexperienced users from wantonly enabling it), runs: gpg --refresh-keys), runs these commands(pacman-key --init, pacman-key --populate, pacman-key --refresh-keys, pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring) and anything else needed to update the pacman keyring and keep it updated, removes the need to type -S after pacman to install packages from Konsole, easily toggles disabling the Steam OS read only file system;
Integrates the first togglable functionality in this repo’s addon which prevents packages from being lost when Steam OS is updated, installs fakeroot using this command(sudo pacman -S fakeroot) and installs all the optional AUR helpers from AUR would genuinely be amazing and save me endless amounts of frustration.
This would simplify installing Linux packages so, so, so much and allow the experience to be much closer to Windows. I currently dual boot Windows because Linux is just such a nightmare for me to work with.
Even installing Pamac has basically been impossible for me(the AUR GUI package manager) due to the four levels of dependencies which have resulted in numerous errors and extra commands needed to run along the way, which has as mentioned before hit me with an unfixable error.
I would be ever so grateful if someone would develop a tool to get all of these automatically installed while avoiding all of the errors.
I install AUR packages “by hand” and maybe ran into this twice, where I had to install AUR packages to install an AUR package. That’s over a course of many years. It’s not a common occurrence.
What packages are you having trouble with?
Also, very important to know, using -S in pacman is called a partial update and it is not supported. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it or it doesn’t work, just best to avoid it. Always use -Syu. The full nuanced explanation can be found here https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported
I wouldn’t disable sudo. This isn’t windows where all users are admins by default. It’s an important security feature to prevent unauthorized things from happening.
When you run makepkg to create a package from a PKGBUILD file, you can use the -s switch to automatically resolve dependencies from the repositories.
Have you tried installing with yay ?
Joke apart I’ve run into these issues once or twice before. The way to go is to purge the keyring then update it from scratch.
For AUR the best way to go is to install yay (see how on ArchLinux wiki) then go from there. Normally the dependencies should install themselves easily.
That’s the point of the AUR helpers like yay. Sounds like you’ve got other problems going on, maybe Arch Linux is not for you.
I’d recommend topgrade as well, its super useful for upgrading everything in your system regardless of distro.
SteamOS is built on arch, hence his desire for decky. It’s not their choice and therefore of of their control so it can’t “not be for you”.
It seems like you’re having a lot of issues – it really shouldn’t be working that way. Here’s how I do it on desktop; should work on the Deck.
Do a
pacman -Syuas others have suggested before installing anything new.From terminal (X used for AUR package name):
-
Install
auraclewithpacman -S auracle; it’s a utility to search and install from AUR easily. -
auracle clone Xwill clone the project in the working directory. -
auracle buildorder Xwill give you a list of dependencies needed to build it. If things say satisfied, you already have them. -
install the dependencies with
pacman -S. You can get fancy by echoing them to a file and using something likesed, or you can just type them manually. -
cdinto the directory you cloned and build the package withmakepkg. -
once done, hit up arrow until you see your installation line for those dependencies with pacman. Change that
-Sto a-Rs(remove them plus any dependencies installed with them). -
install the package you just built with
pacman -U name-of-package.zst. -
profit
If this doesn’t work for you, check where it doesn’t work. It sounds like you may have an issue with
pacmanrather than the AUR.-
sounds like something is going seriously wrong, you should never really be having to deal with this stuff (ive been using arch and the AUR for several years and never have). Im not sure it its a steam deck thing or what. Only thing I can say is make sure to always run sudo pacman -Syu before you install a new package.
Yeah for real, this is my experience every time installing any package. Idk what the problem, but dealing with anything out of the discover store is a nightmare
AFAIK trizen doesn’t depend on anything from AUR so it should build nicely. Then you can use it to manage core and aur with one package manager
I’m tired so I skimmed. But I think this is why I use EndeavourOS. It comes with yay. Easy.
