dotfiles/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       147 packages from core, extra, multilib
packages/blob-aur.packages    13 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 -Syu --needed call, so the databases are fresh and the system is upgraded in the same transaction. Refreshing the databases without upgrading (-Sy then -S) is a partial upgrade, which Arch does not support and which breaks libraries on a fresh install whose ISO is a few weeks old. If that call fails the system is upgraded on its own and 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
playerctl	the quick settings media row

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

Desktop applications

The everyday apps come from the official repositories with everything else:

Package	Opens
loupe	images (GNOME Image Viewer)
imv	images, keyboard-driven, for scripts and quick previews
mpv	video and audio
evince	documents: PDF, PostScript, DjVu, XPS and comic books
guvcview	webcam viewer and capture
libreoffice-fresh	documents, spreadsheets and presentations (Writer, Calc, Impress)
kdenlive	video editing
gnome-text-editor	plain text and Markdown
file-roller	archives (zip, 7z, rar, tar)
gnome-calculator	calculator
baobab	disk usage analyzer
gnome-disk-utility	drives and partitions
gnome-system-monitor	processes and resources
pavucontrol	audio mixer
network-manager-applet	network connections (nm-connection-editor)
obsidian	notes; Super + Shift + O opens or focuses it

hunspell-en_us gives LibreOffice spell checking, and ttf-liberation gives it metric-compatible replacements for Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New, so Microsoft Office documents keep their layout. 7zip, unrar and zip are the archive backends file-roller needs.

In the terminal: btop, htop and nvtop for system and GPU monitoring, duf for free disk space, and ncdu and dua for disk usage.

NetBird comes from the AUR as netbird-bin and netbird-ui-bin. The package ships a templated netbird@.service whose socket lives at /var/run/netbird/<instance>.sock, while the netbird CLI and the tray app look for /var/run/netbird.sock. install.sh adds a drop-in that moves the socket to the default path and enables netbird@main.service, so netbird up and the tray app work with no extra flags. The tray app starts with the session when it is installed. The service starts on the next boot, or now with sudo systemctl start netbird@main.

install.sh makes them the default for their file types through xdg-mime, which writes ~/.config/mimeapps.list. A type that already has a default in that file is left alone, so a choice you made yourself always wins, and an app that is not installed is skipped. The file types for each group are listed once, in default/mime/<group>.types, and read by both the installer and blob-default-mime.

To change them later, use Setup > Defaults in the Blob menu, which has Image Viewer, Video Player and PDF Viewer next to Browser, Terminal and Editor, or:

blob default image-viewer imv
blob default video-player vlc
blob default pdf-viewer zathura

Each lists only the apps it knows, shows only the installed ones in the menu, and sets the whole group of file types at once.

The boot splash

install.sh sets the splash to branding/blob_boot.png. To change it later:

blob boot                    # branding/blob_boot.png
blob boot ~/some/image.png   # or any other image

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 therefore masks plymouth-start.service and plymouth-quit-wait.service until the splash is configured, and blob boot unmasks them as part of configuring everything else - the theme in default/plymouth/, the plymouth mkinitcpio hook, and the initramfs rebuild.

Every splash update then sets GRUB up to boot the machine and everything else on it:

• With GRUB already installed, it makes sure os-prober is installed and GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false, adds whichever of quiet splash vt.global_cursor_default=0 is missing from GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT without touching the rest of the line, and regenerates the menu. os-prober finds other systems, Windows gets an explicit chainload entry when os-prober misses it on a shared ESP, and the run stops if the menu has no Arch entry.
• Without GRUB, it runs the same migration as blob boot grub: GRUB is installed, other systems are detected, and GRUB is armed for one test boot with Limine left as the standing default. Once that boot works, blob boot cleanup retires Limine.
• On a machine not booted in UEFI mode GRUB is left alone and the kernel parameters the bootloader still needs are printed instead.

blob boot detect reruns only the OS detection.

Updating

blob update

Opens with the logo from ~/.config/blob/branding/screensaver.txt (falling back to branding/screensaver.txt), the same text the screensaver draws, so blob branding screensaver changes both. It checks for updates first and lists every pending system and AUR package with its old and new version, then asks once with gum confirm (--no-confirm skips it). When nothing is pending it says so and stops. The update itself runs as four numbered steps: refresh the keyring, pacman -Syu, yay -Sua when the AUR is reachable, and prune orphans. It ends with a summary of what changed and how long it took, an offer to reboot when a new kernel came in, and a notification. A failed step is named on screen and in a critical notification. blob update-available prints the pending count that the bar's update indicator reads. The indicator rechecks every six hours and a few seconds after any pacman transaction, so it clears as soon as an update, from blob update or by hand, finishes.

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.