Arch-Linux

Since the last post about my Arch (and Arch-compatible distributions) binary repository, I’ve added a few more packages. Some examples are the Mullvad VPN desktop client and nimdow, a window manager written in the Nim programming language. Or Emptty, an amazing display manager that I encourage you to try. Despite adding more packages, the compilation and compression time only had a small increase and I’m still below the 5 hour mark. And I’ve kept the zstd “-12” compression level. ...

After a small forced hiatus, userrepository.eu is back. The Covid-19 pandemic made a hit in my income and the wife’s income, so I had to temporarily suspend non-priority expenses. During this period, I had time to consider a few things about the future of the project and decided to change the provider from Scaleway to Hetzner, mostly because the Arch image they’re using is essentially abandonware. If you’re reading this, you’ll probably know that Arch Linux changed the default package compression to ZSTD. In order to update or install any package, you’ll need a pacman version that supports this compression and up-to-date libraries. These requirements aren’t met in older Arch images, like the one used by Scaleway, so the only two solutions were installing another distribution, chrooting into it and hack an Arch install (the solution presented to me by Scaleway support) or change provider. The second option was the less time-consuming one. ...

Today, I’ve decided to try and improve the boot time of my laptop, running EndeavourOS. There was no special reason for it other than “Why not?”. The first thing I made was disabling or masking the following systemd services: systemd-resolved disabled tlp disabled NetworkManager-wait-online disabled lvm2-monitor masked org.cups.cupsd disabled packagekit masked bluetooth disabled (I rarely use the laptop’s bluetooth) blueman-mechanism disabled With this, I was able to save a few milliseconds and decrease the enabled systemd units to 15, but the impact was negligible. ...

Ainda hoje, no máximo amanhã, devo disponibilizar a aplicação para autenticação nas plataformas do Estado com o Cartão de Cidadão. Assim que estiver disponível, basta usares o comando sudo pacman -Syyuv autenticacao-gov-pt para ser feita a instalação. Não te esqueças de adicionar o repositório primeiro, caso ainda não o tenhas feito. Fica atent@.

My Arch buildbot, Jarvis, received an update today in the options logic. Now, it can receive an argument in the add (-a) and delete (-d) options, so the user can specify the package to add or delete. The option to add a package, for now, only works for AUR. If you want to add a package that’s not in AUR, you’ll need to manually add the submodule. In the future, Jarvis will allow you to use a git repository with a PKGBUILD file. ...

Until now, userrepository.eu only used software from AUR. Today, to get me distracted from the flu and a respiratory infection I got a few days ago, I’ve finally created my first package for Arch Linux on my repository. It’s for a GTK web browser named Eoli and it builds from the master git branch. Here’s the PKGBUILD at the time of writing: # Maintainer: Bruno Miguel ​ pkgname=eolie-git _gitname=eolie pkgver=da1899ff pkgrel=1 pkgdesc=“Simple GTK web browser for GNOME” arch=(‘x86_64’) url=“https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Eolie" license=(‘GPL3’) depends=(‘gtkspell3’ ‘python-cairo’ ‘python-dateutil’ ‘python-gobject’ ‘webkit2gtk’) makedepends=(‘git’ ‘gobject-introspection’ ‘meson’) optdepends=(‘python-beautifulsoup4: Import html bookmarks’ ‘python-crypto: Firefox Sync support’ ‘python-fxa: Firefox Sync support’ ‘python-pyopenssl: Show SSL certificates’ ‘python-requests-hawk: Firefox Sync support’) source=(“git+https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/eolie.git”) sha256sums=(‘SKIP’) ​ pkgver() { cd “${_gitname}” ( set -o pipefail git describe –long 2>/dev/null | sed ’s/\([^-]*-g\)/r\1/;s/-/./g’ || printf “r%s.%s” “$(git rev-list –count HEAD)” “$(git rev-parse –short HEAD)” ) } ​ build() { arch-meson “${_gitname}” build ninja -C build } ​ package() { DESTDIR="$pkgdir” meson install -C build } ​ ...

I’ve been using Arch or Arch-based distributions for over a year now. In this time testing a few of them, I’ve always lacked a simple and logical way of installing the same “essential” software. To tackle this, I’ve created a metapackage with all this software and this is what I’ve got so far: # Maintainer: Bruno Miguel https://twitter.com/brunomiguel pkgname=‘bruno-essentials’ pkgdesc=“A metapackage for some packages I find essential. Requires userrepository.eu repo” pkgver=‘0.0.2’ pkgrel=2 ...