09 Apr 09 Feedback For Arch Linux AUR PKGBUILDs
I’ve been spending some time building packages for Arch Linux (very easy, btw!). I’ve put together a package for Origami, the Folding@Home management tool, as I wrote about recently. I’m also now maintaining the Chromium Browser package for Arch Linux in AUR, which has been a lot of fun. Also, just last nite, I built a flashplugin-universal package, which installs both 64bit and 32bit flashplayer. I found that I needed this because I’m running x86_64 but I’m running both 32bit and 64bit browsers regularly. Having both flashplayer architectures installed allows me to have flash in any of the browsers, which is nice. Some of you Arch64 users might find it useful.
I’d love any feedback anyone can give me on the packages, particularly with PKGBUILD standards, efficiency and dependencies. Thank you.
Tags: Arch, chromium, flashplugin, i686, origami, PKGBUILD, x86_64
14 Mar 09 Install Chromium Browser on Arch Linux
Update: I’ve submitted a patch to the existing PKGBUILD in the AUR which brings the Chromium Browser up to yesterdays nightly build. Much improved from the previous.
I saw a post recently on the Planet Ubuntu Users, again by Stefano Forenza, regarding installing and testing the latest daily Chromium browser builds. That got me curious so I started poking around and found an available package for Arch Linux by way of the Arch User Repository. Installation was simple enough and the browser works, but I should mention that it is *very* alpha quality. None of the menu buttons worked for me and I wasn’t able to make use of tab functionality. It is nice to see that some progress is being made though on the Linux platform.
Chromium on Linux
Now that we’ve seen the obligatory screenshot I’ll outline the few simple steps to installing it on Arch.
Method 1
Using the yaourt tool you can install directly from the Arch User Repository. There are a few packages available, but this appears to be the only native package, and not a variant requiring the use of Wine.
yaourt -S chromium-browser
Once this is installed you’ll be able to launch it from your Applications menu. You should note that due to the alpha nature of this client it will also automagically launch with a debug window terminal. If this is closed the browser will close as well. During these early stages this is still a requirement due to the number of issues and amount of debugging required.
Method 2
The second method still requires installing the package from the Arch User Repository, but doesn’t require the yaourt frontend. These steps are as follows:
- Download the chromium-browser tarfile from the Arch User Repository.
- tar xf chromium-browser.tar.gz
- cd chromium-browser/
- makepkg -i
At the time of this writing the Arch User Repository package is marked as out of date. Again, install the package and use the browser at your own risk. It is still very, very alpha.
