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Step Outline For Rebuilding AUR Packages In Arch

Once again Arch updates for webkitgtk breaks gnucash. Gnucash is an accounting / cash application i depend on for keeping track of my expenses. It's been moved from the official repos to the Arch User Repo or AUR. What this means for users is that responsibility for updates (including dependencies) passes solely to users. Any dependencies that gets updates must be rebuilt. The only problem with webkitgtk rebuilt is that it takes ages to build it. In my case it is 4 hours.

First, check if your system has the tools.
# sudo pacman -S base-devel git dev-tools --needed

Prepare the filesystem on which you will build the package.
# sudo mount -o remount,exec,suid /tmp
# sudo mkdir /tmp/source/chroot -p
# cd /tmp/source

Create the chroot.
# sudo mkarchroot chroot/root base-devel

It's time to get the package sources.
# cd package_name_directory
# makechrootpkg -T -r ../chroot/
The -T flag creates a temporary chroot directory while the -r flag points to the original chroot directory.

You will have to repeat the steps above for all the packages that needed to be built and copy the *.pkg.tar.xz to the /var/cache/pacman/pkg diirectory. Copying the built package to the pacman cache directory means you don't have to build all the packages again unnecessarily every time updates happen. You only build those packages affected.

Copy the *.pkg.tar.xz to /var/cache/pacman/pkg/.
# sudo cp *.pkg.tar.xz /var/cache/pacman/pkg/

Build the main package.
# makechrootpkg -T -r ../chroot/ -I /path-to-package/package_name.pkg.tar.xz

Install the package.
# sudo pacman -U /path-to-package/package_name.pkg.tar.xz


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