Additional ARM Packages

ARM Technical Assistance
1

Hello …

I’m VERY happy with Manjaro on my Pi 4 … nice job!

Now looking at moving to the Pi as a daily system and identifying applications that I still need. Curious what/how is best way to bring packages over from Raspbian (er RaspiOS).

Example: There is a SD Card Copier on Raspbian that is pretty handy.

Question is: How do others fill in the gaps? Request a package here on the forum? Add repositories (perhaps package managers)? or compile stuff and contribute?

What the right/best way?

Feel free to point me to correct forum category if I missed here … thanks

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2

A lot of packages are in the repo and even more is in the AUR.
Often packages in the AUR can be built if you just change the arch=() line in the PKGBUILD to include aarch64.

But it all comes down to what package it is.
Some packages are easier to build than others. And some are nearly impossible to maintain, because of missing dependencies (haskell, I’m looking at you).

We do take requests, but we also reserve the right to say no to including it, based on how popular/useful it is and how hard it is to package and maintain.

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3

Thanks, I’ll start looking around in AUR

Would we request a package add here (this category) or is there a better/proper path?

// probably answered in Archived forums, but I’ll take advantage of this new world! //

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4

Sure you can request packages here, but not many is going to be accepted. We are a small team and we already maintain about 300 packages, besides testing images and devices. :slight_smile:

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5

Strit is absolutely correct about the AUR packages and adding aarch64 to the build. It’s quite simple overall and I’ve found in many cases it works very well.

In fact, where it’s not as simple as adding aarch64, and I’ve found a way, I’ve typically responded back on the AUR forums for that package how to get it going – you will find many package maintainers in AUR there quite happy to add/update the package.

I’ve been running Manjaro ARM on the Pinebook Pro now for several months now and have everything I need for my workflow with the exception of games (which still depend heavily on WINE/x86 environments) — however, I never expected, nor wanted to play games on the Pinebook Pro.

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6

I would like to see fake-hwclock added to the Manjaro repos, it is in the AUR. Systemd reports “running since”, and without this the date remains constant which I think is the first time you boot on the image. This is really nice to have, maybe should be part of the base image for RPi.

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7

Just added fake-hwclock to arm-unstable branch.

Thanks for the suggestion.

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8

I could be wrong because I can’t remember what I installed the last time I started again on my PBP, but I seem to recall man-db not being present in the default installation. Might confuse new users when they type man blahblah in the terminal and get an error.

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9

That was corrected a couple of releases ago. :slight_smile:

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10

It’s not so much an additional package, but additional configuration. You can’t run pacdiff because vim is missing. Should:

export DIFFPROG=diff pacdiff

be in the ~/.bashrc file as part of the base configuration?

Maybe with:

Defaults env_keep += DIFFPROG

set in /etc/sudoers.

Probably a better way of setting this globally. I’m just bodging it for me.

11

If pacdiff needs vim to work, the package that supplies pacdiff should have vim as a dependency.
And clearly it does not.

This is not part of the bashrc in Manjaro x64 either.

12

How much time will need to pass before fake-hwclock makes it into stable? Is there a way to “inject” an unstable package into a stable installation without switching to the unstable branch? I tried switching, installing the package and then switching back to stable, but that did not work so well.

13

It should get there by the next stable update, which is soon™.

You should be able to download the package from the repo and install it with:

sudo pacman -U </path/to/downloaded/package>
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14

Sometimes, I am oblivious to the obvious. :smiley:

Thank you

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15

Would it be possible to add code to the ARM repos?

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16

Please clarify.

17

I tried building it some weeks ago, but was not succeful. If you can provide a PKGBUILD that builds on aarch64, I will gladly add it. :stuck_out_tongue:

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18

The open source variant of MS VS Code:

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/code/

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19

Yea. I realized that after Strit’s answer. Did not see code as a package reading it. My bad…

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20

I see that the MS version is supported on aarch64, so I would think the OS version can too. I had not yet looked into installing Code, but it is high on my list.

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