ABS

ABS, or the Arch Build System, is a way to compile official Arch packages, install them on your system, and track them with pacman, while still giving you all the benefits of custom compilation.

Contents

Information

For more information about ABS, please see the ArchLinux Wiki. As a brief overview, ABS downloads the official Arch build scripts onto your system, so you can compile packages with all the patches and configure switches as the developers, while easily applying your own patches and compile switches as well for optization. The resulting packages are the same format as those the repositories provide, so can be handled by pacman.

The Easy Way

Simply run
pacman -Sy abs && abs

Of course, you have read the ArchLinux wiki, haven't you?

If you want a specific package you can run abs with the repo and the package name.

abs core/hurd

A copy of a complete repo.

abs testing

The Hard Way

Since Arch Hurd now has a full ABS client, this is fairly redundant, but presently kept for historical interest

ABS-Archlinux

You can download giselher's AUR package from here. It syncs with the ArchLinux ABS, so you may have to use steps outlined in this page before software will actually run. If you do get a package to run, consider making an AUR package for it, or bringing it to the attention of a developer.

Rsync

For native Arch Hurd packages, rsync access is provided. Just grab yourself an internet connection, git, and a place to keep packages (We suggest /var/abs/), then run
rsync -mrtv --no-motd --delete-after --no-p --no-o --no-g archhurd.org::abs/ /var/abs/
The result will be a copy of Arch Hurd's build scripts.