How and when to use Yaourt on Arch Linux and derivatives?

On a previous occasion we shared with you how to install Yaourt on our system by adding its repository to our pacman.conf file. The use of Yaourt its use is relatively simple and especially if already you are familiar with Pacman you will realize that it is almost the same.

Yogurt (Yet AnOther User Repository Tool; 'Yogurt' in French) is a community contributed wrapper for Pacman, which adds comprehensive access to the AUR repository, which allows automation of package compilation and installation of PKGBUILDs Chosen from thousands on the AUR, in addition to the thousands of available Arch Linux binary packages.

Yogurt uses a syntax exactly the same as Pacman, which saves the user from having to relearn a new system maintenance method, but also adds new options. Yaourt extends the power and simplicity of Pacman, adding more useful features and it provides nice, colored output, interactive search modes, and much more.

Una of the recommendations that I give to know when to occupy Pacman and when it is necessary Yaourt is that in the first place always check if the application we want to install is inside Pacman, this can be checked in the following link.

Si not so then we consult the AUR repositories And if the application is in this case we install with Yaourt, the other point is that also if you want to install a special version or the most recent one, they are almost always available faster in AUR.

On the other hand, if you want to modify any aspect of the installation, Yaourt gives you that possibility.

Basic Yaourt Commands

Basically the commands described here can be divided into 3 sections. The first are installation commands, the second section is the handling of packages and finally their removal.

For install an application we execute:

yaourt -S "paquete"

With this command we order that the repositories are synchronized first, that in case of any change this is detected before starting the package installation.

yaourt -Sy "paquete"

Si you downloaded some pkgbuild or a package from the network you can support yourself with yaourt for compilation, the command for it is:

yaourt -U "/ruta_del_paquete"

If you are having conflicts with the installation, one of the most common problems may be the cache that they keep, to clean it we execute:

yaourt -Scc “paquete”

This command not only installs the application, but in addition to synchronizing the repositories, it examines all the packages and if there are new versions, it installs them:

yaourt -Sya “paquete”

As I mentioned previously, you can rely on the AUR packages page to search for a package, but we can also do it from the terminal. Although here I recommend being as specific as possible.

yaourt -Ss “paquete”

With this other command we will display more detailed information about the package:

yaourt -Si “paquete”

For filter faster, You can search by types of groupseg players, browsers, editors etc. For this we execute:

yaourt -Sg “grupo”

Within package searches, we can also see those that are already installed, to know that we just execute:

yaourt -Qs “paquete”

Like the previous show info commands, it does the same only with packages already installed.

yaourt -Qi “paquete”

When you remove packages from your system, there are usually orphaned packages and these can be detected with this command:

yaourt -Qdt

In this part of removing packages, it is extremely necessary to be careful with the parameters you use, since many times the installed applications or packages have dependencies that are used by others.

Otherwise if you uninstall a package together with dependencies, you run the risk of corrupting the integrity of others or worse still your system.

When we want uninstall any package or application, but without touching its dependencies we must execute this command.

yaourt -R “paquete”

On the other hand, if we are going to remove a package and its dependencies that are not used on the other and that is generally the recommended command, we execute the following:

yaourt -Rs “paquete”

With this command we do the same as the previous one, only we add the part delete the cache

yaourt -Rcs “paquete”

What this command will do is remove a package that is required by someone else, but without touching the dependencies.

yaourt -Rdd “paquete”