Skip to content 
▀▀▀▀██▀▀▀▀   ▄▄▀▀▀▀▀▀▄▄   ▄▄▀▀▀▀▀▀▄▄   ██           ▄▄▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
    ██       ██      ██   ██      ██   ██             ▀▀▀▀▀▀▄▄
    ██       ▀▀▄▄▄▄▄▄▀▀   ▀▀▄▄▄▄▄▄▀▀   ██▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄   ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▀▀

Building the 1st Version.⚓︎

First Version

The first version took one evening. Most of it was narrowing down what counts as "a tool I installed", and one detour caused by a shell alias.

Step 1: What did I install on purpose?⚓︎

What did I install on purpose?

  • pacman -Qe lists explicitly installed packages. On this machine it printed 673, far too many to read.

  • Package groups explain part of that. Installing a group such as gnome or base-devel marks every member as explicit.

Removing group members:

comm -23 <(pacman -Qeq | sort) <(pacman -Qg | awk '{print $2}' | sort -u) | wc -l

gave 538. Only 126 had dropped out, so groups weren't the main cause. Splitting off the foreign (AUR) packages with pacman -Qemq | wc -l gave 53, which is where most of the forgotten programs were: amdtop, aurdex, golazo, updo, rmlint and similar.

Useful pacman queries

  • pacman -Qe: explicitly installed.
  • pacman -Qem: explicitly installed and foreign (AUR).
  • pacman -Qg: members of groups.
  • pacman -Ql <pkg>: files a package installed.
  • pacman -Qi <pkg>: details, including description, size and install date.

Step 2: Keep only terminal tools.⚓︎

Keep only terminal tools

Three filters turn "explicitly installed" into "a tool I might want to look up":

  1. Not a group member (the comm -23 above).
  2. Not plumbing. Names starting with lib, python-, perl-, ruby-, ttf-, otf-, xorg-, gst-, qt5, gtk3- and so on, plus anything ending -libs or -doc/-docs.
  3. Installs a program in /usr/bin and has no .desktop launcher. A desktop launcher means a GUI app, so it is left out.

Step 3: A first script.⚓︎

A first script

The first script ran the filter in a loop and piped the result into fzf with a preview pane. It worked, but it called pacman -Ql once per package and was slow:

#!/bin/bash
# mytools - browse the CLI/TUI tools I explicitly installed
comm -23 <(pacman -Qenq | sort) <(pacman -Qg | awk '{print $2}' | sort -u) \
| grep -Ev '^(lib|lib32-|python-|perl-|ruby-|ttf-|otf-|xorg-|gst-|qt[0-9]|gtk[0-9]?-)|-libs$|-docs?$' \
| while read -r p; do
    files=$(pacman -Ql "$p")
    grep -q ' /usr/bin/.' <<<"$files" && ! grep -q '\.desktop$' <<<"$files" && echo "$p"
  done \
| fzf --preview 'pacman -Qi {} | grep -E "^(Description|Installed Size|Install Date)"; echo; pacman -Ql {} | grep " /usr/bin/." | awk "{print \$2}"' --preview-window=right:60%

It is saved as ~/.local/bin/mytools so it can be run from any terminal (Tilix, Ghostty, anything), with ~/.local/bin on PATH.

The Detour: A sudo prompt that should not exist.⚓︎

A sudo prompt that should not exist

  • The first time the long loop was run as a one-liner it churned for about five minutes and then asked for a sudo password, which locked the account after three failed attempts (a pam_faillock lockout; it expires after about ten minutes or on reboot). Nothing in the command used sudo.

  • The cause was in ~/.zshrc, line 248, from an old ArcoLinux template:

alias pacman="sudo pacman --color auto"
  • In an interactive zsh, every pacman in the one-liner became sudo pacman. A script run as mytools uses #!/bin/bash, which does not load zsh aliases, so the saved script was never affected.

A wrong turn worth recording

  • An early test, bash -c 'type -a pacman', showed nothing unusual, and that was taken as proof there was no wrapper. It proved nothing: bash cannot see zsh aliases. The clue was a trace of the loop showing the real command being run: sudo pacman --color auto -Qenq.

  • The fix was to comment out the alias (and a few of its neighbours from the same template) with a #, not to delete anything:

Line(s) What it was
248 the pacman alias that caused it
290 to 295 display-manager switcher aliases
371 a cleanup alias that removes orphans without asking
  • Because zsh only reads .zshrc when it starts, an already-open terminal keeps the old alias. A brand new shell confirms the edit:
zsh -ic 'type pacman'
  • It should print pacman is /usr/bin/pacman. With the alias gone the script ran with no prompt and listed 207 tools.

Step 4: AUR included, searchable by description.⚓︎

AUR included, searchable by description

The first list only matched package names, so typing monitor or audio found nothing. The second version asks pacman for descriptions and shows them as a second column, so fzf matches both. It also queries pacman -Ql once for all packages instead of once per package, which is much faster:

cat > ~/.local/bin/mytools <<'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
# mytools - browse the CLI/TUI tools I explicitly installed (native + AUR), searchable by name and description
explicit=$(comm -23 <(pacman -Qeq | sort) <(pacman -Qg | awk '{print $2}' | sort -u) \
  | grep -Ev '^(lib|lib32-|python-|perl-|ruby-|ttf-|otf-|xorg-|gst-|qt[0-9]|gtk[0-9]?-)|-libs$|-docs?$')
bins=$(pacman -Ql $explicit | awk '{ if ($2 ~ /^\/usr\/bin\/[^\/]+$/) b[$1]=1; if ($2 ~ /\.desktop$/) d[$1]=1 } END { for (p in b) if (!(p in d)) print p }')
pacman -Qi $bins | awk '/^Name/ {n=$3} /^Description/ {sub(/^Description *: /,""); print n "\t" $0}' | sort \
| fzf --delimiter '\t' --preview 'pacman -Qi {1} | grep -E "^(Installed Size|Install Date)"; echo; pacman -Ql {1} | grep " /usr/bin/." | awk "{print \$2}"' --preview-window=right:40%
EOF

The count went from 207 to 224, now including the AUR tools.

Step 5: Tidy columns and a short name.⚓︎

Tidy columns and a short name

The tab-separated columns didn't line up. Piping through column -t -s $'\t' pads each name so every description starts in the same place. The {1} in the preview command still refers to the first column, the package name.

| column -t -s $'\t' \
| fzf --preview '...' --preview-window=right:40%

Finally, a short alias in ~/.zshrc:

alias tools=mytools

Housekeeping done along the way

  • A leftover ~/.fzf folder from fzf's git installer was removed. The system fzf is on PATH first, so the old copy never ran, and the key bindings come from source <(fzf --zsh).

  • At this point tools was a good, fast list. The next page connects it to mandible and the other help sources.

The next page covers wiring in Mandible, tldr, cheat and man.