makepkg

Created Tuesday 21 February 2017

It is recommended not to use AUR-helpers (like Yaourt), but instead learn and understand how the process works. It should be a matter of 3 simple steps; Acquire the build files, Verify that it does not have malicious intend, and running makepkg -si which in return will download, resolve dependencies with pacman, compile and install it.

A PKGBUILD should be available with the software you download. This file is basically just a Shell script defining the programs install instructions (either compiling or acquire files needed). When makepkg is invoked, it will leave these instructions in a binary format, which pacman can read and install.

Mandatory variables in a PKGBUILD are;

Also licens is typical defined - makepkg will throw an error if not set - though this is not mandatory.

Make sure the base-devel package is installed.

Configuration

# A user specific configuration file is available for all of these configuration steps (Github)
# and will be read from ~/.makepkg.conf - this precedes the system configuration at /etc/makepkg.conf

tmpfs mount options

# It is important that tmpfs is not mounted with noexec
# This is not a default setting (I think) but just to be sure, you can verify it with
$ findmnt --target /tmp

# If it is mounted with noexec, edit /etc/fstab and define the mount options
# If you already have a /tmp line, edit this and correct the options, else create a new entry

tmpfs   /tmp         tmpfs   rw,nodev,nosuid          0  0

Enable compile in tmpfs

# Edit the configuration file /etc/makepkg.conf and uncomment the BUILDDIR=/tmp/makepkg variable

Multi-core optimization

# To specify the number of jobs that can run simultaneous (defined by the no. of cores available),
# uncomment and change the MAKEFLAGS variable in makepkg.conf

MAKEFLAGS="-j$(nproc)"

Specify CPU architecture

# By default, makepkg will try and determine the architecture, but it is recommended to specify
# it yourself. This will optimize programs for the specific architecture.

# You can check your architecture with
$ gcc -c -Q -march=native --help=target | grep march

# And change the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS variables in the makepkg.conf
# Haswell was the architecture of my system.

CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

32bit packages on 64bit systems

# If you need the option to build 32bit packages, we have to install the 32bit compiler
# Make sure the 32bit repository is enabled, otherwise you won't find this package
# Answer yes to remove the current gcc package - the gcc-libs can handle both 32 and 64-bit
$ pacman -S multilib-devel

# Then create a file in ~/.makepkg.i686.conf with the following

CARCH="i686"
CHOST="i686-unknown-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-m32 -march=i686 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
LDFLAGS="-m32 -Wl,-O1,--sort-common,--as-needed,-z,relro"

# And invoke makepkg for 32bit packages with the following
$ linux32 makepkg --config ~/.makepkg.i686.conf

Installing Packages

# From acquiring to installing packages
# A nice little tool to search the AUR is cower - This package does not come from the official
# repository though. So, this is the software we'll be using as example on how to install unofficial
# packages and in return it will leave us with easy and quick way to search AUR packages^

# Packages can be found at https://aur.archlinux.org
# A easy way of getting our packages is with Git
# Ex, the git for cower can be found at https://aur.archlinux.org/cower.git

Acquire build files

# Navigate to the build folder, clone the repository and navigate to the new folder
$ cd ~/makepkg/packages
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/cower.git
$ cd cower

# Alternative you can download a packages tarball and extract it
$ cd ~/makepkg/packages
$ curl -L -O //https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/<PACKAGE_NAME>.tar.gz
$ tar -xvf <PACKAGE_NAME>.tar.gz
$ cd <NEW_FOLDER>

Building the package

# It is important to go through the PKGBUILD and any .install files for malicious commands
# Usually what you are looking for, could be wget or curl commands,
# specially if they are combined with |bash command.
$ less PKGBUILD
$ less <PACKAGE_NAME>.install

# When you are satisfied, make the package
$ makepkg -sirc

# -s = automatically install dependencies.
# If the dependencies does not come from the official repository,
# you will have to install it manually first.
# -i = Install the package if the build was successful.
# -r = Remove build-time dependencies.
# -c = Clean temporary build files.

# With cower I actually got a PGP error, so we'll have to add his key first
$ gpg --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu 1EB2638FF56C0C53

# Then run the makepkg -sirc command again
# Once a package has been installed, the cower folder can be removed again. Voila.

Removing Packages

# Can be done with pacman^
$ pacman -Rs <PACKAGE_NAME>