blomarchy/docs/packages.md

Packages

Leaving the Omarchy repository

Omarchy ships its own binary repository, added to /etc/pacman.conf:

[omarchy]
Server = https://pkgs.omarchy.org/stable/$arch

Thirty-one installed packages came from it. blob-repo-migrate moves off it. Run it dry first; it changes nothing without --apply:

blob repo-migrate
blob repo-migrate --apply

It refuses to run if the stock linux package is not installed, because it removes linux-omarchy.

What happens to each package

Removed (15)

Omarchy's own software, plus one hardware helper this machine has no use for:

omarchy, omarchy-keyring, omarchy-settings, omarchy-nvim, omacalc, omacut, omawrite, tensaku, tobi-try, cliamp, herdr, ttfx, linux-omarchy, linux-omarchy-headers, asdcontrol.

linux-omarchy was installed but not booted - the running kernel is stock core/linux, so the machine is not relying on it. asdcontrol sets brightness on Apple Studio Displays and is reachable only from blob-brightness-display-apple.

Replaced (2)

From	To	Where
ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd-basic	ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd	official extra
hyprland-preview-share-picker	hyprland-preview-share-picker-git	AUR

The first is Omarchy's trimmed build of a font Arch ships in full.

Kept, from the AUR (14)

aether, limine-mkinitcpio-hook, limine-snapper-sync, localsend, minecraft-launcher, mise-bin, spotify, ttf-ia-writer, tzupdate, ufw-docker, visual-studio-code-bin, xdg-terminal-exec, yaru-icon-theme, yay.

All exist in the AUR under the same name. Once the repository is gone, pacman treats them as foreign and yay picks them up, so blob update rebuilds them from source. The first update after migrating therefore takes noticeably longer than usual.

Two are worth knowing about:

• xdg-terminal-exec used to be load-bearing: every TUI launcher, the floating launcher behind most of the menu, and $TERMINAL called it by name, so a failed AUR build silently broke about half the menu. They all go through blob-terminal-exec now, which prefers it and falls back to foot, then kitty, both from the official repositories.
• aether is in the AUR at a version newer than the one the repository shipped.

quickshell never came from the Omarchy repository - it is in official extra.

Installing packages

install.sh installs what is missing before it writes any config:

packages/blob.packages       121 packages from core, extra, multilib
packages/blob-aur.packages    11 packages with no official equivalent

Only missing packages are touched, through pacman -S --needed and yay -S --needed. An entry is treated as already installed, and skipped, when a package of that name is installed, when an installed package provides that name, or when the name is a group whose members are all installed - so base-devel and packages pulled in under a different name no longer come back on every run. AUR packages are built one at a time, so a build that fails is reported at the end instead of stopping the install.

Repo packages go in one pacman call. If that call fails the databases are refreshed with pacman -Sy and it is tried again, because a stale database is what turns an installed-and-present package into target not found. If it still fails the packages are installed one at a time, so one unresolvable name does not block the other hundred - which is how a missing sddm used to turn into a machine with no login screen. install.sh ends by naming any of sddm, hyprland, quickshell and uwsm that are still not installed.

./install.sh --check lists what it would install without installing anything, and --skip-packages does the directories and config only.

Validating the lists

blob-packages-check

pacman -Si and yay -Si both search every configured repository, so a package that exists only in a third-party repo passes them and then fails on a machine without that repo. blob-packages-check names the repositories explicitly instead: official entries must be in core, extra or multilib, and AUR entries must have an exact aur/ match and must not be in an official repo.

Run it after editing either list. It caught localsend and tzupdate sitting in the official list when they only exist in the Omarchy repository, and awww, lazydocker and woff2-font-awesome sitting in the AUR list when they are in official extra.

Bootstrapping an AUR helper

A fresh Arch install has no AUR helper, and yay is not in the official repositories. install.sh builds yay-bin from the AUR once with makepkg before installing anything from the AUR list, which is why base-devel and git are in the official list.

An entry may be written wanted|already-fine, which asks for the first name but accepts either as satisfying the requirement. That is how hyprland-preview-share-picker-git avoids conflicting with the non-git build that the Omarchy repository still ships.

Three of the AUR entries are load-bearing for this fork and were not in Omarchy's own package list, because they were installed by hand on this machine:

Package	Needed by
python-pywal16	blob-wallpaper-set, palette extraction
python-terminaltexteffects	blob-screensaver, the effects it draws
awww	the wallpaper daemon blob-wallpaper-set and blob-theme-menu drive
playerctl	the quick settings media row

playerctl is in official extra, so it sits in the repo list.

No boot splash

plymouth is deliberately not on either list. Blob configures no splash: there is no mkinitcpio hook, no kernel command line, and default/plymouth/ ships no theme assets, so blob-plymouth-set has nothing to publish either. An installed but unconfigured plymouth is not harmless - it takes the console at boot and never hands it back, and getty@tty1 waits on plymouth-quit-wait.service, so the machine reaches neither the greeter nor a TTY.

install.sh masks plymouth-start.service and plymouth-quit-wait.service for that reason, which un-breaks a machine that already has the package. To go further:

sudo pacman -Rns plymouth

Updating

blob update

Refreshes the keyring, runs pacman -Syu, runs yay -Sua when the AUR is reachable, prunes orphans, and sends a notification. blob update-available prints the pending count that the bar's update indicator reads.

This replaces 27 upstream scripts of channel, migration, and version-pinning machinery. There are no release channels: there is one repository set, which is Arch plus the AUR.

After migrating

pacman -Qtdq        # orphans the removals left behind
pacman -Qm          # everything now AUR-managed

blob-repo-migrate backs up /etc/pacman.conf to pacman.conf.bak.<epoch> before editing, and prints the path.