GuiMan

A GUI frontend for pacman & AUR that actually works

I got tired of typing pacman -Syu and yay -S something all the time, so I built a proper GUI for it. Uses Tauri + Vue + Rust because why not make it fast and native while we're at it.

Installation

AUR

yay -S guiman
paru -S guiman

Quick install

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Junaid433/guiman/master/install.sh | bash

What it does

Everything pacman can do, but with buttons. And it actually shows you what's happening instead of fake progress bars.

Package stuff:

• Install/remove/update packages from official repos and AUR
• See the actual pacman output in real-time (no more guessing what's taking so long)
• Search through everything fuzzy-style, works way better than pacman -Ss
• Batch operations because who wants to install packages one by one?

System maintenance:

• Full system updates with one click (handles conflicts like a boss)
• Find and clean up orphaned packages that are just taking up space
• Clean package cache intelligently (not just paccache -r)
• Mirror management with reflector integration

AUR features:

• Vote on packages, flag them as out-of-date
• Adopt orphaned AUR packages if you're feeling charitable
• Custom makepkg flags for when you need special builds

Power user features:

• Visual dependency graphs (finally understand why you have 500 packages installed)
• Find out which package owns that random file
• Browse package groups (base-devel, gnome, whatever)
• Backup/restore your package list for when you nuke your system

Quality of life:

• Polkit integration so you don't have to type your password every 30 seconds
• Dark theme because light themes hurt eyes
• Keyboard shortcuts for power users
• System notifications when long operations finish

Screenshots

How to use it

Just run guiman from your terminal or click the icon in your app menu. Pretty straightforward.

The interface is tabbed, here's what's in each tab:

• Dashboard: Overview of your system - how many packages you have, updates available, disk usage. Quick actions for common tasks.

• Installed: All your installed packages. Switch between card view (pretty) and table view (practical). Click any package for details.

• Updates: See what needs updating. Click the big "Update System" button. It handles conflicts automatically (usually).

• Orphans: Packages that nothing depends on anymore. Safe to remove most of them, but check first.

• Groups: Package groups like base-devel, xfce4, etc. Good for seeing what's in each group.

• Files: Search for packages by filename, or find out which package owns a specific file.

• Repositories: Enable/disable repos, run reflector to optimize mirrors.

• Dependencies: Visual graphs showing what depends on what. Useful for understanding why you can't remove that one package.

• History: Log of all package operations. Good for remembering what you installed last week.

• Settings: Themes, notifications, Polkit setup, etc.

Pro tips:

• Select multiple packages with checkboxes for batch operations
• Use Ctrl+F to search anything instantly
• For password-less operation: Settings → System Integration → Install Polkit Policy (one-time setup)
• Most operations have keyboard shortcuts if you're into that

Building from source

Need these first:

sudo pacman -S rust nodejs npm webkit2gtk gtk3 libayatana-appindicator

Then:

git clone https://github.com/Junaid433/guiman.git
cd guiman
npm install

# Development (with hot reload)
npm run tauri:dev

# Production build
npm run tauri:build

Quick dev setup:

• npm run dev for just the frontend (faster for UI changes)
• npm run tauri:dev for full stack development
• Build produces binaries in src-tauri/target/release/

Architecture:

• Frontend: Vue 3 + Tailwind (because CSS is hard)
• Backend: Rust with Tauri (because system calls are important)
• Communication: Tauri commands between frontend/backend
• No Electron bloat - it's actually lightweight

Contributing

Got ideas? Found bugs? Want to help? Great!

How to help:

• Report bugs on the issue tracker
• Suggest features (but check if they're already planned first)
• Fix bugs or add features via pull requests
• Test on different setups and report issues

Contributing code:

1. Fork the repo
2. Make your changes (keep it simple, one feature per PR)
3. Test that you didn't break anything
4. Submit a PR with a description of what you changed

Guidelines:

• Follow existing code style (cargo fmt for Rust, prettier for JS if I set it up)
• Test your changes
• Don't add dependencies unless absolutely necessary
• Keep the UI consistent

Discussions and questions: GitHub Discussions

What's next

Currently working on:

• Better caching to make searches faster
• Improved notifications (they're kinda basic right now)
• UI polish and better error messages

Planned features:

• Package rollback (because sometimes updates break things)
• Better search filtering options
• Flatpak/Snap support (for people who use those)
• Maybe a plugin system someday

Long-term dreams:

• Support for other distros (but Arch is the priority)
• Package building tools
• More advanced dependency management

Check the issues for what's being worked on. Or just ask if you want something specific.

License

MIT. Do whatever you want with it.

Built by Junaid Rahman

Thanks to the Arch community for putting up with my experiments, and to Tauri/Vue/Rust for making this possible without going insane.

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