AURa

AURa is an automated build system to build AUR packages for Arch Linux.

Why

Every time you run a system upgrade on Arch Linux using an AUR helper, it takes plenty of time to build packages that you have installed from the Arch User Repository. For me, the rest of the system can easily upgrade within 5 minutes while the AUR packages take another 20-30 minutes to build and install.

What

AURa is a set of scripts that use GitHub actions to periodically build specified packages and publish them on a custom repository hosted at Heroku.

How

AURa accepts a packagelist file where you can specify what AUR packages it needs to build. It schedules a GitHub workflow to build the given packages every day. If a PKGBUILD has changed, the workflow will build it. Otherwise, it merely copies the built version from its last build. It then creates a fresh package database and publishes the repository using it.

Demo

You can use my package repository for demonstrating the results.

• Append the following to your /etc/pacman.conf. Set the SigLevel to Never or import my public PGP key to your Pacman keyring. See adding unofficial keys on Arch Wiki.

  [aura]
  SigLevel = Never
  Server = https://arch-aura.herokuapp.com/aura

• Run pacman -Sy to sync your package databases.

• Try to install an AUR package from my packagelist.

Usage

• Fork this repository

• Add AUR packages to the packagelist.

  • To find out packages that you've installed from the AUR, you can run pacman -Qm. It will list all the packages that do not belong to any Pacman repositories. Then you can filter this list down to the AUR packages.

  • Once you have the list, you can add one package per line in the packagelist, e.g.

    google-chrome
    spotify
    

• Generate a PGP key to sign the built packages. It is mandatory in this setup.

  # use all the defaults and add your Name and email when prompted.
  gpg --full-gen-key
  
  # export the generated key
  gpg --armor --export-secret-keys GENERATED_KEY_ID > private.asc
  gpg --armor --export GENERATED_KEY_ID > public.asc
  
  # after exporting public and private keys, you may delete the PGP key
  # from your system.
  gpg --delete-secret-keys GENERATED_KEY_ID
  gpg --delete-keys GENERATED_KEY_ID

• Add secrets for the GitHub workflow

  • PGP_KEY_ID: Paste the ID of the key generated in the previous step.
  • PGP_PUBLIC_KEY: Paste the contents of public.asc file created in the previous step.
  • PGP_SECRET_KEY: Paste the contents of private.asc file created in the previous step.
  • PGP_SECRET_KEY_PASSPHRASE: The password for decrypting the private key generated in the previous step.
  • HEROKU_EMAIL: Your Heroku email.
  • HEROKU_API_KEY: API key to access Heroku. It can be found in Heroku > Account Settings > API Key.
  • HEROKU_APP_NAME: Name of the Heroku app to deploy the package repository.

• To test the setup, commit the changes and then trigger the workflow manually. See workflow_dispatch.

• To use your new repository with Pacman

  • Edit /etc/pacman.conf and append the following at the bottom of the file

    [aura]
    SigLevel = Required TrustedOnly
    Server = https://<your_heroku_app_name>.herokuapp.com/aura

  • Add your public PGP key to the Pacman keyring.

    sudo pacman-key --add public.asc # file from the previous steps
    # and then locally sign the imported key to mark it as trusted
    sudo pacman-key --lsign-key <imported_key_id>

  • Resync package databases using sudo pacman -Sy.

Updating build frequency

By default, build is scheduled to run every day. To change it, edit the Cron schedule specified in the GitHub workflow.

Caveats

• It builds updated packages in a workflow run and overwrites their older versions when publishing. At any given time, the package repository will only have the latest built version of a package.

• Pacman requests timeout in 10 seconds so it may error out if the Heroku dyno is asleep. To wake it up beforehand, hit the home page of the repository which is an HTML redirect to the AURa GitHub repository.

• Ensure that you only include the packages that you trust. Automatically building untrusted packages from AUR will expose your system to severe security risks.

• Sometimes AUR packages might receive faulty PKGBUILD updates. When it happens, the GitHub workflow will fail immediately without publishing any new packages.

License

All source files are licensed under Apache License Version 2.0 unless stated explicitly.