Confused by options when using YAY to install

General system Pacman & AUR helpers
1

following is terminal display when I am trying to install synology-drive…

[jack@endeavour ~]$ yay -S synology-drive
AUR Explicit (1): synology-drive-4.0.3_17892-1
Sync Make Dependency (1): qt5-tools-5.15.19+kde+r3-1
:: (1/1) Downloaded PKGBUILD: synology-drive
1 synology-drive (Build Files Exist)
==> Packages to cleanBuild?
==> [N]one [A]ll [Ab]ort [I]nstalled [No]tInstalled or (1 2 3, 1-3, ^4)
==> Ab
→ aborting due to user
[jack@endeavour ~]$

I aborted because I don’t know what to select. I have never installed with YAY before and I’m coming to Endeavour OS from MX-Linux. Any help is appreciated.

2

If you press enter it uses the default. That’s normally the way to proceed. If you want to clean build the package you put either A for all or select one of the other options. Pressing enter bypasses all of these options and it will just proceed with the install or update of the package.

3

Pressing enter bypasses all of these options and it will just proceed with the install or update of the package.

Just take note of what is installing etc, can be handy if you need to free up some space

4

Thanks, that was easy. May I ask, what is a clean build? I’m a 79 year old self taught tinkerer with OS’s other than MSFT.

5

Thanks

6

Maybe ask google etc (not trying to be smart just struggling in the wording )

7

When you build software, it first builds from scratch. Thereafter it only builds what has changed to save time. A clean build will once again build from scratch.

8

Packages that are build by yay are stored in .cache/yay for later reference (e.g. updates) a clean build will delete that package from the cache and gets build like it was a new install.

9

Please take the time to read PKGBUILDS and never just accept them blindly

here are some threads on a recent malware attack on the AUR

Take time to read about pacman and (AUR wrapper of choice) in this case yay.

10

thanks

11

Thanks

12

Thank you

13

@jackdotnet you can thank all three in one reply if you put @ in front of their username.

14

Clean build is the package build is downloaded and built from the downloaded package. Otherwise If you had a certain AUR package already installed and you are updating it uses the cached package build that already exists if it hasn’t been removed. Or you may have changed the current package build by editing it. So if you select clean build it re-downloads the package build from the AUR using the current package build in case it may have changed or you don’t have it in cache. Hopefully I’m correct on this info as I am also not an expert but this is how I believe that it works and I do use it myself.