Is it just me, or when there are Manjaro updates, some AUR apps tend to be broken for whatever reason. A straight remove & re-install brings things back to normal. But it seems to happen just that little too often.
It might be you, please read:
How are you doing the updates? The best method is to do system upgrades using Pacman (or maybe with Pamac using the --no-aur parameter, but Pacman is preferred) and only then upgrading the AUR packages.
Some AUR stuff is not being maintained as well as what you’ll generally find in the main repos; this is unfortunately to be expected, at least from time to time.
I also see you’re on Stable branch according to your profile. AUR is best used with Unstable branch.
EDIT: Typo
By habit I now always use pamac update. This refreshes all databases and installs any updates, including AURs. It works over 95% of the time, but every now and then the odd AUR seems to be screwed afterwards.
System updates typically — not always, but typically — include newer versions of shared libraries, which requires recompilation of some of your AUR packages due to binary incompatibilities between the libraries that the installed AUR packages were compiled and linked against on the one hand, and the newer libraries on the other hand.
Yes, I can see that happening.
Unfortunately the AURs I use, particularly an important app I use a lot, that isn’t available (as far as I’ve checked) on the official repos means I’ll have to accept a re-install when the problem recurs - unless there’s an alternative for Manjaro.
The app in question is simplescreen recorder. Is there an alternative, because this AUR one is very good?
It’s in the Extra repository.
$ pamac search recorder
texlive-music 2024.2-2 extra
TeX Live - Music packages
tenacity 1.3.3-4 extra
An easy-to-use multi-track audio editor and recorder, forked from Audacity
peek 1.5.1-4 extra
Simple screen recorder with an easy to use interface
kamoso 24.05.2-1 [Installed] extra
A webcam recorder from KDE community
wf-recorder 0.4.1-2 extra
Screen recorder for wlroots-based compositors such as sway
krecorder 24.05.2-1 extra
Audio recorder for Plasma Mobile and other platforms
gnome-sound-recorder 42.0-3 extra
A utility to make simple audio recording from your GNOME desktop
deepin-screen-recorder 5.12.15-4 extra
Deepin Screen Recorder
simplescreenrecorder 0.4.4-2 [Installed]
A feature-rich screen recorder that supports X11 and OpenGL.
The bottom one.
EDIT: this doesn’t seem to work on Wayland, in my case anyway. Are you using x11 or Wayland? A bit more system info might help e.g. inxi -zv8
Your earlier AUR packages were built against the library versions installed on your computer at the time of the build. When libraries get updated by a Manjaro upgrade, AUR packages depending on those libraries that have changed will not work until you rebuild them.
It’s the penalty you pay for using AUR. If, like me, you have packages you particularly need from AUR, you have to accept that as part & parcel of using them. Don’t forget, AUR isn’t supported by Manjaro, so you can’t expect the devs to take account of or test against AUR packages.
I’m not sure with regard to what extra functionality simplescreenrecorder
would offer — and note that there is a binary version of it in the AUR as well, called simplescreenrecorder-bin
, which will work best if you switch to the Unstable branch — but your profile does not state what desktop environment you’re using, and so there might be alternatives in the repo.
For instance, if you’re on Plasma, then spectacle
can do screen recording, and if you’re on Sway/wlroots
, then there is wf-recorder
. For Deepin, there is deepin-screen-recorder
.
On Manjaro, when you make use of a lot of AUR packages it might be worth considering to move from stable
branch to testing
or even unstable
as those are more in sync with the AUR dependencies.
That said those branches come with their own caviar’s for sure, but for me testing
is a good middle ground.
Indeed, as mentioned in post 3. To add: Unstable is generally synced with Arch Stable several times a day…
Though this wouldn’t make any difference when libraries that AUR packages were built against get updated.
Caveat emptor: beware complimentary fish eggs
I had noticed it as well, but I didn’t want to say anything.
Alternatively, there’s also cavia emptor — a rodent on a shopping spree.
I’m on x11, my desktop is Xfce, so deepin-screen-recorder
should run okay. I’ll look for some reviews on it, but not that bothered now I’ve been given an explanation to the cause of simplescreenrecorder
failing. I’ve only needed to re-install this app twice in 2 years.
Unfortunately, it is not just you. That means, you are not the only one that has nor read the fine manual/tutorial/wiki and “uses” AUR without actually understanding how it works and how to maintain it. That is why there is a warning in pamac it is “unsupported” - to try to deter the non-reading users from using it, but unfortunately it does not work very well.
To sum it up:
You have to be on unstable or testing, the aur maintainer has to have rebuild it, and then you have to rebuild it.
When you use the AUR, you are the package maintainer. That means you need to learn which packages you have installed from the AUR that require rebuilds when dependency libraries are updated.
Not quite. Reinstalling the same cached package built on older, incompatible libraries will do absolutely nothing. However, rebuilding it on the newer libraries will.
Are you sure?
pamac search --no-aur simplescreenrecorder
or
pacman -Ss simplescreenrecorder
I think you’re right there. I didn’t use the -a
option (and when I last checked, it isn’t enabled by default in pamac.conf
) but having another look at the terminal output, EXTRA
isn’t at the end of that line (but neither is AUR
).
In any case, the OP mentioned trying the one above (deepin version), so hopefully that might be a better option.
I can’t remember explicitly installing it and this is a 6+ year old installation, so I guess it was in the repos at the time.
I noticed that…
Good point. Is it ever? No idea, I don’t use Pamac much.
Yes.

No idea, I don’t use Pamac much.
Neither do I.