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What is 'yay' AUR Helper and how to Install it?

Agampreet Singh Agampreet Singh Follow Sep 29, 2021 · 2 mins read
What is 'yay' AUR Helper and how to Install it?
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So if you use Arch Linux, you must have heard of a word “AUR”. Now the question arises, What is AUR?
AUR stands for “Arch User Repository”. It is not the official package repository by the team of Arch Linux, but it is the community maintained repository in which the people can create their own projects and submit them to the AUR so that people can install it on their system easily without building the project.
Now this is a simple introduction for AUR. I won’t elaborate it much cause this post is focusing on the yay AUR Helper.
Now again, what is an AUR Helper? AUR helpers automate usage of the Arch User Repository. In particular, they may automate the following tasks:

  • searching for packages published on the AUR;
  • resolving of dependencies between AUR packages;
  • retrieve and build AUR packages;
  • retrieve web content, such as user commits;
  • submission of AUR packages.

So I hope now the basic concept of AUR is clear. Now let’s go to what is yay AUR Helper. Yay is an open source Arch User Repository helper written in “GO” language. It’s source code is hosted on Github here — https://github.com/Jguer/yay
It is the most used AUR Helper these days and is packed with many features. It also has an active developing community. Even I love it and use it a lot. These are its features:-

  • Perform advanced dependency solving
  • Download PKGBUILDs from ABS or AUR
  • Tab-complete the AUR
  • Query user up-front for all input (prior to starting builds)
  • Narrow search terms (yay linux header will first search linux and then narrow on header)
  • Find matching package providers during search and allow selection
  • Remove make dependencies at the end of the build process
  • Run without sourcing PKGBUILD

Looking at the features, you might be thinking it is a nice AUR Helper. Now to install it, follow the steps below:-
Open up a terminal and run this code

$ sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
$ cd yay
$ makepkg -si

For more information about the AUR Helper yay, visit GitHub - Jguer/yay: Yet another Yogurt - An AUR Helper written in Go
With this I end with my blog.
Thanks for reading!

Agampreet Singh
Written by Agampreet Singh Follow
A student who is also a Tech Enthusiast. Founder of this Blog Website