emacs-aurel

About

This is an Emacs package for searching, getting information and downloading AUR (Arch User Repository) packages. Its functionality is very similar to the one provided by cower, but instead of the command-line interface you use Emacs interface.

Also you can use it for (un)voting for packages and (un)subscribing for package comments (see AUR account actions), i.e. it may be a substitution for aurvote and aurnotify.

The package uses AurJson RPC interface to get information about AUR packages.

You may look at the screenshots below or at the gif demonstration made by Ivaylo Kuzev to get an idea how aurel looks like.

Installation

MELPA

The package can be installed from MELPA (with M-x package-install or M-x list-packages).

Manual

Add the following lines to your .emacs.

• Add a directory with this package to the load-path:

  (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/aurel-dir")

• Add autoloads for the interactive functions:

  (autoload 'aurel-package-info "aurel" nil t)
  (autoload 'aurel-package-search "aurel" nil t)
  (autoload 'aurel-package-search-by-name "aurel" nil t)
  (autoload 'aurel-maintainer-search "aurel" nil t)
  (autoload 'aurel-installed-packages "aurel" nil t)

• Set a directory where the packages will be downloaded:

  (setq aurel-download-directory "~/abs")

Usage

• Search for packages by name or description:

M-x aurel-package-search

Searching for multiple words (separated with spaces) is supported. If you want to search for a string containing spaces, quote it with double quotes ("..."). Examples of searching:

• ttf
• strategy game
• "python library" xml

• light weight "programming language"

• Search for packages only by name (i.e., only packages with names that contain a searched string will be displayed):

M-x aurel-package-search-by-name

• Search for packages by maintainer:

M-x aurel-maintainer-search

• Get an information about a package by exact name:

M-x aurel-package-info

• Display information about installed AUR packages:

M-x aurel-installed-packages

A particular filter (see Filtering) is useful here: press fv to hide the packages with the same installed and current AUR versions (i.e. to see the potential candidates for updating).

There are 2 kinds of buffers (major modes) for representing an information about packages:

• aurel-list-mode

It is used for listing multiple packages. Press RET on a package line to get more information about the package.

• aurel-info-mode

It is used for displaying an information about a single package.

In both modes you can press d to download the package, but don't forget to set aurel-download-directory before.

Using prefix (C-u) before interactive commands creates a new info or list buffer instead of using the existing ones. That allows, for example, to keep results of multiple searches or to look at information about several packages at the same time.

Maintainer name in an info buffer is a button. If you press RET (keep in mind C-u) on it, a new search for packages by this maintainer will happen.

Each aurel buffer has its own history similar to the history of the Emacs help or Info modes. You can move backward/forward by the history with l/r and refresh information with g (confirmation can be disabled with aurel-revert-no-confirm variable). If you want to change the number of stored elements (or to disable the history), use aurel-info-history-size and aurel-list-history-size variables.

AUR account actions

If you have an AUR account, you can use aurel to vote for packages, to subscribe for new comments and to show additional information (whether a package is voted/subscribed by you or not).

The following keys are available in a buffer with package info by default:

• v to vote (C-u v to unvote)
• s to subscribe (C-u s to unsubscribe)

To enable receiving additional AUR user specific information (Voted and Subscribed lines should appear in the info buffer), use the following:

(setq aurel-aur-user-package-info-check t)

The first time aurel needs the above information, you will be prompted for your AUR account (you may set aurel-aur-user-name variable for convenience) and a password. The password is not saved anywhere, but a login cookie is saved (emacs saves cookies in ~/.emacs.d/url/cookies by default). The cookie is valid for about a month, so if you don't want to be prompted for the credentials every month, you may add the following line to your ~/.authinfo (or ~/.authinfo.gpg) file (see auth manual for details):

machine aur.archlinux.org login <user> password <password>

(Substitute <user> and <password> with your credentials)

Configuration

User options can be explored with M-x customize-group RET aurel.

If you don't like the names of info and list modes and buffers, you can change those, for example:

(setq aurel-list-mode-name "aurel-list"
      aurel-info-mode-name "aurel-info"
      aurel-list-buffer-name "*aur-list*"
      aurel-info-buffer-name "*aur-info*")

By default after receiving information about the packages from AUR server, pacman is called to get additional information about installed packages. If you want to disable that (to make the process a bit faster or if you don't have pacman installed), use the following:

(setq aurel-installed-packages-check nil)

Package list

Anything you see in a buffer with a list of packages is configurable.

Columns can be configured with aurel-list-column-format. Descriptions of a package parameters (displayed in aurel-info-mode buffer) are stored in aurel-param-description-alist variable. Columns in aurel-list-mode buffer have the same titles as these descriptions, unless they are not set in aurel-list-column-name-alist.

So if you want a new column to be displayed, you need to add a proper value to aurel-list-column-format and optionally add a column name to aurel-list-column-name-alist and add an association to aurel-list-column-value-alist if you need some special calculations of the column values.

Suppose, you want to rearrange columns, to make them more compact (and thus to shorten their names) and to add a new sortable column with the "Last Modified" time. In such case you can do something like this (see the second screenshot):

(setq aurel-list-column-format
      '((name 20 t)
        (maintainer 9 t)
        (votes 5 aurel-list-sort-by-votes)
        (version 8 t)
        (installed-version 8 t)
        (last-date 11 t)
        (description 30 nil))
      aurel-list-column-name-alist
      '((votes . "V.")
        (maintainer . "Maint.")
        (last-date . "Modified")
        (version . "Ver.")
        (installed-version . "Inst.")))

(eval-after-load 'aurel
  '(add-to-list 'aurel-list-column-value-alist
                '(last-date . my-aurel-list-get-last-date)))

(defun my-aurel-list-get-last-date (info)
  "Return formatted date when the package was last modified."
  (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d"
                      (aurel-get-param-val 'last-date info)))

Filtering

You can filter the current list of packages to hide some packages. Press fC-h to see all available filter bindings. The most useful ones are:

• ff to select and enable a filter;
• fd to disable all filters;

A new filter will be added to the enabled ones, so for example you can hide unmaintained and outdated packages by pressing fm and fo. If you want to make a filter the only active, press C-u before a filter command.

If you have an idea of a new useful filter, you may open an issue about it.

Package info

Anything you see in a buffer with a package info is configurable.

Various aspects of displaying information about a package can be configured with aurel-info-parameters, aurel-info-installed-parameters, aurel-info-aur-user-parameters, aurel-info-insert-params-alist, aurel-info-format, aurel-info-fill-column, aurel-info-voted-mark, aurel-info-display-voted-mark, aurel-info-installed-package-string, aurel-info-aur-user-string, aurel-info-ignore-empty-vals, aurel-info-show-maintainer-account variables and with aurel-info-... faces. For example:

(setq aurel-info-format "%-16s"
      aurel-info-ignore-empty-vals t
      aurel-info-aur-user-string "————————————————————————————————————\n"
      aurel-info-installed-package-string aurel-info-aur-user-string
      aurel-date-format "%d-%b-%Y %T"
      aurel-empty-string "")

Downloading a package

You can change the default behavior of a "downloading action" with aurel-info-download-function, aurel-list-download-function and aurel-list-multi-download-function (you can mark several packages for downloading with m/M and unmark with u/U/DEL) variables. Currently the following functions are available:

• aurel-download
• aurel-download-unpack (default in a list buffer)
• aurel-download-unpack-dired (default in an info buffer)
• aurel-download-unpack-pkgbuild
• aurel-download-unpack-eshell

Screenshots

Aurel with default settings:

Aurel with all modifications, described above:

In both screenshots alect-dark theme from alect-themes is used.

Contributors

The following people helped to improve this package:

• Andrea De Michele: fixed the pacman localization issue.