FCGU - Repo for GNOME pre-releases

"FCGU" is a Git repo that provides PKGBUILDs as well as a binary repo of GNOME pre-releases for Arch Linux. It's made for testing and bughunting purposes and so contains beta and rc releases most of the time. The actual PKGBUILD are nowadays to be found at gitlab.archlinux.org, in the "fcgu"-branch of every git repo.

Support

Ko-Fi (Also for Paypal and one-time donations)

Liberapay

Chat / Matrix & Mastodon / Fediverse

Feel free to join us at our matrix group or ping me on Matrix, or on Fediverse/Mastodon directly. 😜️

Looking For New Mirrors

FCGU is a free community project. That's why we need your help. If you own a server that could become a mirror of the project, please let us know.

Installation

Disable unsupported repos

Before you start - disable all 3rd-party-, as well as Arch testing-repos and downgrade/uninstall packages they provide. FCGU is not compatible with them and things might break on you if you keep them enabled. Do not report any problem with them enabled.

Keyring

All of our packages are signed. To be able to install trustworthy packages it's necessary to install and trust the signing-key first.

# pacman-key --keyserver hkps://keys.openpgp.org --recv-keys 6E58E886A8E07538A2485FAED6A4F386B4881229
# pacman-key --lsign-key 6E58E886A8E07538A2485FAED6A4F386B4881229

Mirror-List

fcgu-mirrorlist is an own package that should be available from all mirror servers. You need to install.

# pacman -U https://br-mirror.amanoteam.com/fcgu/fcgu-mirrorlist-4-3-any.pkg.tar.zst

Repository

This repository entry should be above the [core], and every other enabled repo in /etc/pacman.conf.

[fcgu]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/fcgu-mirrorlist

Here is a preview how it should look:

...
# The testing repositories are disabled by default. To enable, uncomment the
# repo name header and Include lines. You can add preferred servers immediately
# after the header, and they will be used before the default mirrors.

[fcgu]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/fcgu-mirrorlist

#[core-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[core]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

#[extra-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[extra]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
...

If that's done, a full system update is required (pacman -Syu)

How to change back to Arch' default GNOME?

The repo needs to be removed from /etc/pacman.conf

[fcgu]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/fcgu-mirrorlist

When that's done a pacman -Syuu will downgrade all packages to the Arch-repo versions. After thats done, you need to check for additional packages who where not removed but can conflict with your installation. Check with pacman -Qm and remove them.

Frequently Asked Questions - FAQ

Will you do alpha releases?

This depends. Alpha releases often contain broken builds and might come with dependencies on pre-alpha development snapshots of other software. This isn't ideal to providing packages. It's recommended to get the alpha releases from the development snapshots on the AUR.

Will you do the stable releases?

Yes, FCGU will also package stable releases until they arrive in Arch Linux directly.

What happens after the stable release is shipped in Arch Linux?

Once the stable version of GNOME arrives Arch Linux official repository, fcgu will remove its packages, so pacman will switch to the official repository again.

Why do I get downgrade warnings?

warning: <package>: downgrading from version 1:2.34.5+678+g91011d12-1 to version 1:2.34.5+r678+g91011d12-1

Sometimes this repo needs to revert versions or change the version numbers scheme. Please use pacman -Syuu in these cases.

Will this kill my setup?

This repository provides most of the time unstable software (development snapshots). It's not reliable in any way, and should only be used for testing purpose.

How the get debugging symbols?

All packages are build with debugging symbols. Most of them require the user to install the packages debugging packages. For example there is nautilus and nautilus-debug. For everything that is not in the repo, you need to build the packages yourself, see: Debugging/Getting_traces

Compatiblity to Arch-Based-Distros

We only support (an up-to-date) Arch Linux. Distros who come with older package versions or customization can conflict with what this project provides. Because of this they are not supported. This includes Arco Linux, Artix Linux, EndeavourOS, Garuda Linux, Manjaro, and all the others.

Pamac conflict / removal

TLDR: This Repo only supports pacman. The mirrorlist package does provide the line conflicts=(pamac libpamac). Please remove pamac if you want to use fcgu.

Why?

fcgu is a pretty unstable, testing repo. It highly depends on the functionality of pacman. Manjaros Pamac does bring in another logic that can conflict in way or another with this repo as well as with the path to move back to distros packages. Because of this, pamac was set as conflict. If you still want to use pamac You still can make it work by manually adding the mirrorlist

Will you push the PKGBUILDs to the AUR?

In order to do this, the PKGBUILDs would need a lot of extra work and testing, just for the packaging part. Because time is a very limited resource that's not possible to do right now (and not planned for the future).

I want to provide a mirror.

If you want to have your own mirror, please do a PR and add your mirror to the fcgu-mirrorlist. If that's done. Join us on matrix, as we also need your servers IP6/4 addresses to allow the sync. Alternatively you can also ask one of the current mirror providers in order to mirror a mirror.

What do the cryptic pkgrel/pkgver numbers mean?

FCGU tries to keep versions in between what is currently in Arch Linux and what will be in Arch Linux next. So a hassle-free upgrade will be possible. A few rules must be observed for this.

Stable releases

• pkgrel: 1 -> 0.1
• pkgver: sed -r '/\.([0-9])/!s/$/\.0/;s/[^-]*-g/r&/;s/-/+/g'
  • X -> X.0

Dev releases

• pkgver: sed -r 's/\.([a-z])/\1/;s/([a-z])\./\1/;s/[^-]*-g/r&/;s/-/+/g'
  • X.beta.1 -> X.beta1
  • X.1.beta -> X.1beta
  • X.0.beta.1 -> X.0beta.1

Git snapshots

• pkgver: sed 's/[^-]*-g/r&/;s/-/+/g'
  • tag+r60+g3f9dba93c

Troubleshooting

error: GPGME error: No data

You might have hit a broken mirrorserver. Please report this. Feel free to switch to another mirror. In case you still can't sync (-Syu) you have to delete /var/lib/pacman/sync/fcgu.db manually.

rm "/var/lib/pacman/sync/fcgu.db"