Powaur - an AUR helper with a pacman-like interface

Question

Hi guys,
I've just written this minimalistic AUR helper called powaur, with an interface like pacman / yaourt, so
there's no need to learn an addition set of commands. C is the only language I'm really really comfortable
with, so powaur is written in C.
Links
Github - https://github.com/yanhan/powaur
AUR - http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=49296
Updates
24 Jan 2012:  - Updated to work with pacman 4 (!!)
10 July 2011:  - allow uppercase answers for questions
28 June 2011: - --noconfirm option added
                       - --list-aur option added; lists installed AUR packages and their version
                       - only resolve dependencies for new / outdated AUR packages
26 June 2011: - allow installing of packages as root
                       - add per-user directory in form of /tmp/powaur-username, please comment out
                         "TmpDir" section of your powaur.conf for this to take effect
                       - print immediate dependencies for -S
                       - only print dependency graph for -S when --debug is supplied
10 June 2011: -S supports dependency resolution
                       -Su available to update outdated AUR packages
                       --crawl to output topological order of packages
                       -G --deps uses similar dependency resolution algorithm with -S
31 May 2011: Colorized output is now available!
26 May 2011: Multithreaded downloading is now supported!
Features
Currently, powaur offers the following feature set:
-G, --getpkgbuild Downloads PKGBUILDS of listed packages from the AUR
--deps Resolve dependencies for packages. This is turned off by default.
--threads <N> Limits the maximum number of threads to N (max of 10)
-S, --sync When used alone, installs packages from the AUR without dependency resolution.
--check Only meaningful with -u. Checks for outdated AUR packages without upgrading them
-i, --info Similar to that of pacman
-s, --search Searches the AUR for a single package
-u, --upgrade Updates outdated AUR packages
--vote Used with -s, orders search results by vote count (highest first) instead of alphabetical order
-Q, --query Queries installed packages
-i, --info Similar to that of pacman
-s, --search Similar to that of pacman
--crawl <package(s)> Shows a valid topological order of given packages
-B, --backup [dir] Backup the pacman local database in <dir>, or the current directory if unspecified
-M, --maintainer Searches the AUR for a maintainer
--vote Orders the maintainer's packages by vote count (highest first) instead of alphabetical order
--color Enable colorized output
--nocolor Turn off colorized output
--debug Displays debug information
-h, --help Displays help
-V, --version Displays version
Credits
Many thanks to Dave Reisner (falconindy) for allowing me to use code in cower for json parsing.
I also referred to source code from pacman and git.
Finally
Feature requests are welcome!
Last edited by yanhan (2012-01-24 11:27:33)

Answer 1

Hey there, yanhan. I just switched over from Gentoo to Arch simply for my love of Gnome 3. Maybe when Gentoo jumps on their Gnome support, I'll switch back... but for now, I'm loving Arch.
I downloaded powaur because I like pacman and I wanted to handle the AUR as seamlessly as emerge handles its overlays. I've got a super newb question for you, though, as per I don't quite know pacman's in's and out's yet.
So, as I'd like the 64-bit flash binary. I go about doing this as root:
[root@laptop patrick]# powaur -S flashplugin-prerelease
Syncing:
flashplugin-prerelease
==> Do you wish to proceed? [Y/n]
==> y
Resolving dependencies... Please wait
==> Dependency graph:
xineramaproto (installed) -> randrproto (installed) -> inputproto (installed) -> xextproto (installed) -> renderproto (installed) -> iana-etc (installed) -> xcb-proto (installed) -> kbproto (installed) -> xproto (installed) -> fixesproto (installed) -> compositeproto (installed) -> damageproto (installed) -> tzdata (installed) -> linux-api-headers (installed) -> glibc (installed) -> libice (installed) -> libdatrie (installed) -> libthai (installed) -> pixman (installed) -> libdaemon (installed) -> expat (installed) -> libjpeg-turbo (installed) -> libxdmcp (installed) -> libxau (installed) -> libxcb (installed) -> libx11 (installed) -> libxext (installed) -> libxinerama (installed) -> libxi (installed) -> libxfixes (installed) -> libxcomposite (installed) -> libxdamage (installed) -> libxrender (installed) -> libxcursor (installed) -> libxrandr (installed) -> nspr (installed) -> run-parts (installed) -> gcc-libs (installed) -> pcre (installed) -> glib2 (installed) -> atk (installed) -> attr (installed) -> acl (installed) -> libcap (installed) -> ncurses (installed) -> readline (installed) -> sqlite3 (installed) -> bash (installed) -> gzip (installed) -> libgpg-error (installed) -> libgcrypt (installed) -> keyutils (installed) -> findutils (installed) -> texinfo (installed) -> libtasn1 (installed) -> sed (installed) -> gdbm (installed) -> db (installed) -> libsasl (installed) -> gmp (installed) -> zlib (installed) -> libxml2 (installed) -> shared-mime-info (installed) -> freetype2 (installed) -> fontconfig (installed) -> libxft (installed) -> gnutls (installed) -> libpng (installed) -> cairo (installed) -> pango (installed) -> libtiff (installed) -> gdk-pixbuf2 (installed) -> gtk-update-icon-cache (installed) -> cracklib (installed) -> pam (installed) -> shadow (installed) -> coreutils (installed) -> filesystem (installed) -> util-linux (installed) -> libsm (installed) -> e2fsprogs (installed) -> dbus-core (installed) -> dbus (installed) -> avahi (installed) -> perl (installed) -> openssl (installed) -> libldap (installed) -> krb5 (installed) -> libcups (installed) -> ca-certificates (installed) -> libssh2 (installed) -> curl (installed) -> nss (installed) -> gtk2 (installed) -> libxt (installed) -> mozilla-common (installed) -> flashplugin-prerelease (AUR target)
==> Upgrading:
flashplugin-prerelease
==> Edit PKGBUILD for flashplugin-prerelease? [Y/n/a]
==> n
==> Continue installing flashplugin-prerelease? [Y/n]
==> y
==> ERROR: Running makepkg as root is a BAD idea and can cause
permanent, catastrophic damage to your system. If you
wish to run as root, please use the --asroot option.
Ok, fair enough.
So, as _not_ root.
[patrick@laptop powaur]$ powaur -S flashplugin-prerelease
Syncing:
flashplugin-prerelease
==> Do you wish to proceed? [Y/n]
==> y
Resolving dependencies... Please wait
Segmentation fault
So... what's my silly noob mistake that isn't allowing me to use your wonderful helper?