Package Management

December 9, 2021
in Arch Linux, Package Management
4 min read

Managing Arch Linux ARM Repositories from x86_64 Systems

(Update: The tool armutils, which is mentioned in this blog post, is no longer maintained. The source code repository was archived.)

I have some custom repositories for Arch Linux packages that I use for packages from AUR and other packages that I created. Recently, I started supporting ARM architectures and thus needed a way to manage (i.e., add/build, update, remove) these packages for ARM architectures as well. One possibility to do so is installing Arch Linux ARM on an ARM device and using it for the management tasks. However, by combining some tools, it's also possible to manage ARM packages from an x86_64 system; even distributed builds via distcc are supported. In this blog post, I explain how this works.

March 15, 2020
in Arch Linux, System Installation, Package Management
5 min read

Arch Linux Meta Packages

Meta packages can help to automate installation and configuration tasks. They are created like normal packages, but their main purpose is to depend on other packages to facilitate the installation of these dependencies. In this post, we describe in detail how they can be used.

February 16, 2020
in Arch Linux, System Installation, Package Management
3 min read

Automating the Installation of Arch Linux Systems

Arch Linux is great because it brings flexibility and gives users control since it's their decision how the system is set up and configured. On the other hand, the standard installation process¹ is completely manual, and if the installation needs to be done more often or if multiple machines need to be installed, the process can become cumbersome and annoying. In this post, we will discuss some approaches to make the installation more convenient and easier to repeat.