yay on CachyOS: install, first run, settings and fixes

Install yay with pacman

1. Install yay from the official cachyos repo. pacman checks the package signature before it installs.
   sudo pacman -S yayCopy

First run

1. Running yay with no arguments is an alias for yay -Syu, a full system upgrade.
   yayCopy
2. Type a search term to get an interactive selection menu of matching packages.
   yay <Search Term>Copy
3. If you installed development packages (names ending in git) before you used yay, generate the development package database once.
   yay -Y --gendbCopy

Key settings

1. Check development packages for updates during a system upgrade.
   yay -Syu --develCopy
2. Make development package checks permanent, so yay and yay -Syu always include them.
   yay -Y --devel --saveCopy
3. Turn on the PKGBUILD edit menu and turn off the diff menu.
   yay --editmenu --diffmenu=false --saveCopy
4. Make combined upgrade the default mode.
   yay -Y --combinedupgrade --saveCopy
5. Act only on AUR packages, or only on repo packages, by adding --aur or --repo to an operation.

Common fixes

yay shows no colored output

Make sure the Color option is turned on in /etc/pacman.conf.

yay does not offer an update for a git package I know has changed

yay uses a hash cache for development packages. If the package was installed with another helper it may never have been added. This fixes the current version of every devel package and starts checking from there:

A "Flagged Out Of Date AUR Packages" message appears

It does not mean updates are available. The packages were flagged out of date on the AUR, but their maintainers have not updated the PKGBUILDs yet.

Clean unneeded dependencies

yay can remove dependencies that are no longer needed:

Uninstall yay

1. Remove yay and the dependencies nothing else needs.
   sudo pacman -Rns yayCopy

Sources

• yay README on GitHub
• yay on packages.cachyos.org