So far, the answer to this has always been no "because the AUR is unsupported".
Historically, the previously existing AUR feature was removed in commit [6338e71] as a prerequisite in order for `archinstall` to become adopted as an official package. If I remember correctly, the reasoning back then revolved around the support staff being potentially unhappy/overrun by workload, and also because the "AUR is not officially supported" argument.
With [archinstall#4447] we received yet another request with regards to this topic: The chosen approach is to add the (optional) possibility of building and installing paru and/or yay (as two of the most popular AUR helpers) using a dedicated menu entry under "archinstall" -> "Applications" -> "AUR Helpers". The menu entry is accompanied by a warning that the use of the AUR and the AUR helpers is not supported, thus potentially satisfying one of the historical concerns. In my opinion, this placement is good, as it is clearly separated from the remaining installation workflow and warns the user.
However, given the previous reasoning for not including AUR helpers directly, I'd like to open up the discussion on this topic.
Would now be a good time to allow AUR helpers to be installed via `archinstall`? Not AUR packages, but helpers. It seems like a large portion of users install yay/paru anyway (as of writing this), and it makes sense from a repetitive-task-standpoint to allow users to choose — whether or not they want access to AUR early in the installation process, rather than us saying no and making it less accessible. Aside from apparently being a common repetitive task of setting an AUR helper up, there are also certain drivers[1] users want to pull in during installation, as well as AUR packagers would slightly benefit from this option if they want to try their packages during installation.
So with this, I would like to open up the discussion — where both "yes" and "no" are welcome, but I'd appreciate some reasonings behind them as I'm most likely going to reference this mail thread if the consensus is "no". And I hope that "I don't care" people speak up too (we'll count them as leaning towards "sure, go ahead"), so I can get a reliable benchmark of what we think about it.
//Torxed [archinstall#4447]: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/pull/4447 [1]: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/discussions/4075[6338e71]: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/commit/6338e7116ef5405cd9b97f066e45a89b7d8e67e7
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