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paru is an aur helper that allows you to use a package manager to install packages from the aur.

What's the Aur

The Aur is a set of community managed packages that can be installed on arch based distros.

Why a helper?

paru just makes it easy, no clone and run makepkg. You can do everything paru can do using the built in pacman installer.

Manual Install from the Aur

You will need to manually instal pacman from the aur in order to get started.








        

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

Installing packages with paru

Once setup you are ready to install packages from the AUR just like the core repos.








        

# you can update your system using paru
paru -Syu

# you can install packages from the AUR
paru -S tailscale
paru -S prismlauncher

# even core repo packages can be installed
paru -S docker

Paru in Docker

Here is a snippet from my devtainer dockerfile. Where I use paru to install packages from the AUR inside of a dockerfile.








        

FROM archlinux

RUN echo '[multilib]' >> /etc/pacman.conf && \
    echo 'Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist' >> /etc/pacman.conf && \
    pacman --noconfirm -Syyu && \
    pacman --noconfirm -S base-devel git && \
    groupadd --gid 1000 devtainer && \
    useradd --uid 1000 --gid 1000 -m -r -s /bin/bash devtainer && \
    passwd -d devtainer && \
    echo 'devtainer ALL=(ALL) ALL' > /etc/sudoers.d/devtainer && \
    mkdir -p /home/devtainer/.gnupg && \
    echo 'standard-resolver' > /home/devtainer/.gnupg/dirmngr.conf && \
    chown -R devtainer:devtainer /home/devtainer && \
    mkdir /build && \
    chown -R devtainer:devtainer /build && \
    cd /build && \
    sudo -u devtainer git clone --depth 1 https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git && \
    cd paru && \
    sudo -u devtainer makepkg --noconfirm -si && \
    sed -i 's/#RemoveMake/RemoveMake/g' /etc/paru.conf && \
    pacman -Qtdq | xargs -r pacman --noconfirm -Rcns && \
    rm -rf /home/devtainer/.cache && \
    rm -rf /build

USER devtainer
RUN sudo -u devtainer paru --noconfirm --skipreview --useask -S \
    bat \
    cargo \
    direnv \
    dua-cli \
    dust \
    fd

Final Thoughts

There are other options out there, paru seemed to be the most supported at the time I started using arch and there has been no other reason for me to change it. It's treated me well for nearly a year now.