Force update from AUR

Support AUR
1

Hello,
i just looked up the following issue over the forum and the web without finding an answer, so here it is.

Today an update for a package has been released in AUR and, like the previous times, any AUR helper i try (paru/yay) won’t find there’s a newer version of it to be upgraded.
The package is whatsapp-for-linux which is version 1.4.0-1 on AUR https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/whatsapp-for-linux

Launching both -Syu and -Syua the update is not found, as you can see below the only difference is that with the first command the warning tells me that the local package is more recent than the one in community. (that’s in Italian, my system’s language, feel free to ask for a translation)

$ paru -Syu
[sudo] password di bucch: 
:: Sincronizzazione dei database in corso...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
:: Aggiornamento del sistema in corso...
attenzione: whatsapp-for-linux: la versione installata (1.3.2-1) è più recente di quella presente in community (1.1.2-0)
 non ci sono aggiornamenti disponibili
:: Controllo di aggiornamenti dalla AUR in corso
:: Controllo di aggiornamenti da repository di sviluppo in corso
 non c'è nulla da fare

$ paru -Syua
:: Controllo di aggiornamenti dalla AUR in corso
:: Controllo di aggiornamenti da repository di sviluppo in corso
 non c'è nulla da fare

of course the actual package on my system is the second-last release:

$ paru -Qi whatsapp-for-linux 
Nome                      : whatsapp-for-linux
Versione                  : 1.3.2-1

Querying the repos for that package gives me different results (I’ve truncated the output):

$ paru -Si whatsapp-for-linux   
Repository                : community
Nome                      : whatsapp-for-linux
Versione                  : 1.1.2-0

$ paru -Sia whatsapp-for-linux  
Repository                 : aur
Nome                       : whatsapp-for-linux
Versione                   : 1.4.0-1

The last time i had to reinstall the package with paru -Sa whatsapp-for-linux, because paru -S whatsapp-for-linux will downgrade to community version without asking for the repo.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the package manager is checking the version over community only and not on AUR so it’s not seeing the new one.

Is there a way to force the package manager to always check over AUR for a single package in order to be automatically updated?

Thanks and sorry for the wallpost.

2

So … doing

sudo pacman -Syu && yay -Sua

You dont get the aur version from the yay update?

Honestly I am not sure we should even have it in the repos …

3

it shouldn’t downgrade a package installed from aur:

Screenshot_20220108_222835

we do:

Screenshot_20220108_223147
Screenshot_20220108_223147725×104 8.72 KB

4

I know … I said: not sure that we Should.
(given its niche, an AUR package exists, and its a proprietary facebook product)

1 Like
5

Nope:

$ sudo pacman -Syu && yay -Sua
[sudo] password di bucch: 
:: Sincronizzazione dei database in corso...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
:: Aggiornamento del sistema in corso...
attenzione: whatsapp-for-linux: la versione installata (1.3.2-1) è più recente di quella presente in community (1.1.2-0)
 non ci sono aggiornamenti disponibili
:: Searching AUR for updates...
 there is nothing to do

as @ ishaanbhimwal show’d, that is the only way to let the user select which one to install. But i don’t have time to follow every release for all my installed AUR packages and check if it’s updated or not.

6

Well, to be fair, its only those AUR packages that have the same name as our repo packages, of which there are very few … and even then, in most cases the desirable outcome is what you are experiencing - wouldnt want to so easily overwrite repo packages. And, its only the one package for you, not dozens.
Having said that … everything would be pretty tranquil if the package were just dropped from our repos.

EDIT - confirmed … will be removed. :axe:

2 Likes
7

Well, thanks.

It’s a rather drastic solution but looks like an improvement for the whole community.