Arch Linux aura

ID

aura

Links

Documentation · Repository

Upstream stars

⭐ 1,918

Last commit

2026-01-13

Version requirement

>= 4

Platforms

🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · ⨂ Unix

Operations

installed · outdated · orphans · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup · doctor

purl types

pkg:alpm/ · pkg:aura/

CLI name

aura

Every call

aura --noconfirm <command>

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: pacman-based

Source

pacman.py

AUR helper wrapping pacman, driven through the aura binary.

Aura reuses every parser and query of Pacman unchanged, but not its forced arguments and not its outdated(): those are the two places where a v4 aura differs from the helpers around it.

Note

Every v4 subcommand answers to a long name, a pacman letter and a long pacman flag alike, so aura --query --upgrades and aura -Qu are one command. That is what lets this class inherit Pacman’s operations verbatim rather than restating them against a clap-only vocabulary.

Important

Repository upgrades and AUR upgrades are two commands here, where yay and paru fold both into one --query --upgrades. Aura’s -Qu reads the local ALPM database against the sync databases, so it reports the official repositories alone and an out-of-date AUR package stays invisible to it. The AUR half lives behind --aursync --sysupgrade --dryrun, which reports without acting. outdated() runs both and concatenates them, so mpm reports what an aura -Syu followed by an aura -Au would actually upgrade.

What mpm adds to aura

Through mpm, aura gains:

  • a one-command cleanup --orphans that removes every orphaned dependency at once

  • --extended search, to match against package descriptions

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover aura alongside dkp-pacman, pacaur, pacman, pamac, paru, pikaur, shelly, trizen, yay and any other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your aura commands, in mpm

You already know aura: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…

With aura

With mpm

List what’s installed

pacman --color never --query

mpm --aura installed

List outdated packages

aura --query --upgrades

mpm --aura outdated

Search for a package

pacman --color never --sync --search fire

mpm --aura search <pkg>

Install a package

sudo pacman --color never --sync firefox

mpm install pkg:aura/<pkg>

Upgrade one package

sudo pacman --color never --sync firefox

mpm --aura upgrade <pkg>

Upgrade everything

sudo pacman --color never --sync --refresh --sysupgrade

mpm --aura upgrade --all

Remove a package

sudo pacman --color never --remove firefox

mpm remove pkg:aura/<pkg>

List orphaned dependencies

pacman --color never --query --deps --unrequired

mpm --aura orphans

Clear caches

sudo pacman --color never --sync --clean --clean

mpm --aura cleanup --cache

Run health checks

pacman --color never --database --check

mpm --aura doctor

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations

Operation

Supported

Notes

installed

✅

outdated

✅

Only packages tracked in a sync database are reported; foreign packages (AUR builds, -U installs) stay invisible to the plain pacman binary.

orphans

✅

search

✅

Extended search backfilled by mpm.

install

✅

A package already installed as a dependency is marked explicit by mpm.

upgrade

✅

upgrade_all

✅

remove

✅

The --orphans flag also drops the package’s orphaned dependencies.

sync

✅

cleanup

✅

The --orphans sweep is backfilled by mpm.

doctor

✅

Configuration

  • Ignore aura on the mpm CLI by passing the --no-aura option.

  • Ignore it for every run in your configuration:

    [mpm]
aura = false

  • Raise the timeout of all aura calls:

    [mpm.overrides.aura]
timeout = 900

  • Run mpm config-template aura to print all overridable settings for your configuration file:

    [mpm.overrides.aura]
cli_names = [
    "aura",
]
cli_search_path = []
dry_run = false
ignore_auto_updates = true
plan = false
post_args = []
pre_args = [
    "--noconfirm",
]
pre_cmds = []
requirement = ">=4.0.0"
stop_on_error = false
unmaintained = false
version_cli_options = [
    "--version",
]
version_regexes = [
    "aura\\s+(?P<version>\\S+)",
]

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every aura call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Recipes

A few jobs you would otherwise script around aura, one mpm command each:

  • Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --aura dump aura.toml, then mpm restore aura.toml on the next one.

  • Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --aura sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

  • Gate CI on health: mpm --aura doctor relays Arch Linux aura’s own diagnosis and exits non-zero on trouble.

Privilege escalation

Arch Linux aura runs sudo from inside its own commands: mpm never wraps it, keeps an already-warm credential cache alive for those internal escalations, and warns when a mutating call goes silent on a terminal with a cold cache and no prompt on screen, since a password prompt may be hiding in the stream.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Concurrency

mpm never runs aura at the same time as pacaur, pacman, pamac, paru, pikaur, trizen or yay: they all reach the pacman database (/var/lib/pacman/db.lck), and two of them mutating at once fail to init their transaction. Each mutating operation waits for the previous one, even with a higher --jobs, while managers outside this group keep running in parallel.

Only mutations are held back. The read-only queries (installed, outdated, search) take no backend lock and stay fully concurrent.

Cooldown

State of Arch Linux aura’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None (Arch AUR helper; could take paru’s probe)

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

  • Registry: AUR

  • Retraction: None at the version level: an AUR package is a git repository with no per-version artifact to withdraw, so remediation is a maintainer push or deletion of the whole package

  • Publish date: ✅ server-set LastModified, the push timestamp mpm’s yay overlay and paru probe gate on. Git commit dates are client-set (GIT_COMMITTER_DATE), forgeable, and never consulted

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Reference traces

A collection of raw native outputs captured from the manager’s own CLI and recorded in the manager source. If you know Arch Linux aura well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ aura --noconfirm --query --upgrades
kmscon-terminfo 10.0.2-2 -> 10.0.3-1
python-platformdirs 4.11.5-1 -> 4.11.7-1

$ aura --noconfirm --aursync --sysupgrade --dryrun
 yay-bin :: 12.6.0-1 -> 13.0.1-1

Version check

The version is probed by running:

$ aura --version
aura 4.2.0

and extracted with:

r"aura\s+(?P<version>\S+)"

Upstream project

Metrics

fosskers/aura

Activity

commit activity commits since open issues open pull requests

Popularity

forks watchers contributors

Metadata

latest release release date license main language

Changelog

  • 8.1.2 (2026-10-12)

    • Run sync and cleanup last and without a spinner on a cold sudo cache, so the tool’s own password prompt can be answered.

  • 8.0.0 (2026-09-20)

    • Mark a package already installed as a dependency as explicitly installed when mpm install or mpm restore names it, so mpm cleanup --orphans keeps it.

    • Add the aura AUR helper, reporting repository and AUR upgrades together.