Serene

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Package Sources ​

At the heart of Serene are its package sources. A package source is essentially where the PKGBUILD that is used to build the package is coming from. Each package has a source associated with it which can modified as desired.

Currently, there exist three different sources which are accessible to the user:

If your are wondering what source an underlying package has, you can see the source: field from serene info <my-package> using the CLI.

Another important distinction that is to be made are devel sources. Each of the above sources can be in devel mode. That means that serene will basically treat the package like a -git package and check whether the sources for updates, and not just whether the PKGBUILD has changed. See the arch wiki entry for more information. You can change the devel state for a given package using serene info <my-package> set devel true/false.

Source Types ​

This documentation entry will now go over the different sources and how you can use them with the CLI. For more information about the specifics of the commands used, refer to the CLI documentation.

AUR Source ​

To add a package from the AUR is very straight forward with the [CLI]. Just use the add command without any special arguments using the AUR package name:

shell
serene add <my-aur-package>

The AUR source will automatically set the devel state based on whether the package name ends with -git.

Git Source ​

The git source allows you to use a custom git repository as a package source. The git repository should follow the same rough format, i.e. contain a PKGBUILD and a .SRCINFO file. The repository can then be added by using:

shell
serene add --custom https://<my-git-host>/<my-git-repository>

If your package is a devel package, you'll need to either also pass --devel when adding the package, or set the devel state after having added it.

It is recommended that custom repositories contain contain their own .SRCINFO. Serene however will automatically generate one based off of the PKGBUILD when no such file is found. You may just notice that adding the package could take a bit longer than usual.

Raw Source ​

The raw source is for using custom, raw PKGBUILD files. You can provide the the CLI with a PKGBUILD and Serene will build it for you. You can add a PKGBUILD like this:

shell
serene add --pkgbuild --file path/to/PKGBUILD

Note that this source obviously will not update if you don't mark it as a devel package (either after adding or with --devel) because it will never receive a new PKGBUILD. To update such a package, you should simply add it again by using the --replace flag to replace the previous source.