How to Install Packages from AUR in Arch Linux

Simple tutorial for setting up your Arch Linux system to install packages from Arch User Repository (AUR).

Arch Linux has several repositories. The official and stable ones are community, core, extra and multilib. These four main repo contains thousands of applications and packages which you can install using pacman command.

However, another repo called Arch User Repository (AUR) primarily enables anyone to upload and distribute their application to end users. AUR is very popular since you can literally find everything in this repo.

Hence you must learn how to set up your Arch Linux system to install packages from AUR.

Set up AUR repo in Arch Linux

Many programs allow you to install packages directly from the AUR using simple commands similar to pacman.

In this article, we used yay – which is one of the best AUR helpers. Here’s how.

Open a terminal and install base-devel and git packages for compilation of yay. Use the following command:

sudo pacman -S base-devel git

If you see any prompt, hit enter to choose the default selection.

Now, clone the yay repo using the following command in sequence.

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git

Find out your ID using id command and change it using the following. Make sure you change the user name for your system.

sudo chown -R debugpoint:users ./yay

Go to the directory and compile using the following command sequence.

cd yay

makepkg -si

Wait for the completion of the above command, and it should complete the installation steps.

Installing a package using the AUR repo

Once you are done, you can now use yay command from the terminal to install any package. For example, if you want to install Firefox, use the following command.