aurpick

中文文档 | English

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Easily install a specific version of AUR packages — current, historical, or newer.

aurpick lets you browse complete Git history, preview PKGBUILDs, and pick the exact version you need.

Features

• Complete History Browsing - View all Git commit history of the package
• Interactive Selection - Powerful search and filtering via fzf
• Version Information - Automatically parse PKGBUILD version from each commit
• Live Preview - View commit information and PKGBUILD content
• Official Package Redirect - Auto-detect official repo packages and invoke downgrade
• GitHub Mirror Support - Optional GitHub AUR mirror to reduce load on official AUR and avoid service disruptions
• No AUR Helper Required - Works independently using only git and makepkg
• Development Mode - Preserve temporary files for debugging

Dependencies

• git - Clone AUR repositories
• fzf - Interactive selection interface
• base-devel - Build AUR packages (includes makepkg)
• downgrade (optional) - Handle official repository packages

Install dependencies:

sudo pacman -S git fzf base-devel

Usage

Basic usage:

aurpick <package-name>

Examples:

# Rollback yay after a problematic update
aurpick yay

# Use GitHub AUR mirror (read-only experimental mirror)
aurpick --github yay

# Development mode (preserve temporary files for debugging)
aurpick --dev yay

⚠️ Important Limitations

Using aurpick is pointless or will fail for at least the following types of packages:

1. VCS packages (-git, -svn, -hg, etc.)

   • These packages use pkgver() functions to dynamically fetch the latest upstream source code during build time
   • Even if you select a historical PKGBUILD, it will still build the current upstream version

2. Packages with version-agnostic download URLs

   • Source URLs like https://example.com/latest.tar.xz always point to the newest file
   • Selecting historical PKGBUILDs won't fetch the corresponding historical source files

3. Packages with deleted upstream sources

   • If upstream has removed old release files, downloads will fail with 404 errors
   • The --skipchecksums flag can only skip verification, not solve missing files

How It Works

1. Clone the AUR Git repository for the specified package (from official AUR or GitHub mirror)
2. Traverse all commit history and extract PKGBUILD version information
3. Provide interactive selection interface via fzf
4. Switch to the selected historical commit
5. Build and install using makepkg

Options

• --dev - Development mode, preserve temporary files in /tmp/aurpick-<package>
• --github - Use GitHub AUR mirror instead of official AUR source
• --version / -v - Show version information

Usage Tips

• This tool focuses on AUR packages. Official repository packages will be redirected to the downgrade tool if available
• Older versions may encounter checksum mismatches. You can skip verification if needed

Development

Development Dependencies

For testing and development:

sudo pacman -S shellcheck python-cram

• shellcheck - Static analysis for shell scripts
• python-cram - Command-line testing framework

Running Tests

Run the complete test suite:

bash test.sh

This will:

1. Run shellcheck for static code analysis
2. Run all cram functional tests

Please ensure all tests pass before submitting code.

Project Structure

aurpick/
├── aurpick          # Main executable script
├── test.sh          # Test runner (shellcheck + cram)
├── test/            # Test cases (cram format)
│   ├── basic.t
│   ├── version.t
│   ├── dev-mode.t
│   └── ...
├── README.md        # Documentation (English)
└── README.zh.md     # Documentation (Chinese)

License

MIT License - See LICENSE