How to Install Yay AUR Helper in ArchLinux

Written in Go programming language, Yay, short for Yet another Yogurt, is an AUR helper that allows users to install and manage packages on an ArchLinux system. During installation, it automates the installation of software packages from PKGBUILDS. Yay replaces Aurman and Yaourt which have long been discontinued. Since its release, Yay has proven to be a remarkable helper and a perfect alternative to the native Pacman package manager.

Yay offers benefits such as advanced dependency solving, downloading PKGBUILDS from AUR and ABS, autocompletion for AUR software packages, and removing any make dependencies when the build process completes.

In this guide, we will demonstrate how you can install the Yay AUR helper and provide some examples of how you can install and manage software packages.

Prerequisites

Before you get started, ensure that you have an instance of ArchLinux installed with a sudo user configured to install the software packages.

Step 1: Install the base-devel package on ArchLinux

The first step is to install the base-devel package which provides a set of packages for building or compiling packages from AUR. If you are using a minimal ArchLinux installation, it’s probably not pre-installed, so Install it as follows:

$ sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel

Step 2: Install Git

Next, install Git. This is a free and opensource version control system that allows you to easily manage and keep track of your code repository.

$ sudo pacman -S git

Step 3: Clone the Yay repository

The next step is to clone the Yay repository from GitHub. We will use the Git version control tool to clown the repository. But first, navigate to the /opt directory.

$ cd /opt

Then clone the Yay repository.

$ sudo git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git

By default, the cloned yay directory is owned by the root user and belongs to the root group. We need to change the ownership to the logged-in user as follows.

$ sudo chown -R winnie:winnie yay-git/

Step 4: Install Yay AUR helper

Finally, to install Yay, navigate into the cloned directory.

$ cd yay-git

And run the command below.

$ makepkg -si

Once installed, confirm the version of yay installed as shown.

$ yay --version

Step 4: Using Yay to install and manage packages

With Yay installed, let’s take a look at some of the tasks that you can execute.

To update system packages, run the command:

$ yay -Syy

To run a full upgrade of the system including the kernel, issue the command:

$ yay -Syu

To install a software package, use the syntax:

$ yay -S package

For example, to install the Nginx web server, run:

$ yay -S nginx

You can start and check the status of the webserver to ensure that the installation was successful.

$ sudo systemctl start nginx

$ sudo systemctl status nginx

You can also confirm from the web browser by browsing the server’s IP.

http://server-ip

To remove a package, use the syntax:

$ yay -Rns package

For instance, to remove Nginx from the system run the command:

$ yay -Rns nginx

For more on yay command usage, visit the man pages

$ man yay 

We hope you are now enlightened about Yay AUR helper and can easily install and manage software applications.