Arch Linux

augur

Member

Registered: 2026-09-22

Posts: 4

Getting the apksigner tool without AUR

I can get it from AUR, according to this page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Android

Arch warns that packages from AUR are completely unofficial and that they have not been thoroughly vetted.

Is there another, safer way to get apksigner on Arch?

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,670

Website

Re: Getting the apksigner tool without AUR

The warning doesn’t imply you should not touch AUR. It means you should not treat PKGBUILDs in AUR as trusted. “Not trusted” is not a synonym of “unusable.”

You are expected to understand the PKGBUILD. Whether you write it yourself or take it from somebody else. AUR or elsewhere. And you have to establish trust, regardless of the software source: again, AUR or anywhere else.

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augur

Member

Registered: 2026-09-22

Posts: 4

Re: Getting the apksigner tool without AUR

I took a look at the PKGBUILD and I didn't understand a lot. I chose to trust Arch, and Arch doesn't trust AUR.

Debian seems to have an official apksigner package. I think I trust Debian more than I trust AUR. Maybe I'll try something in a virtual machine first. Maybe I'll end up using AUR. Of course, I would be grateful if somebody shared other ideas on this.

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,384

Re: Getting the apksigner tool without AUR

all the aur package does is to download the android sdk from google and unpacks it into the system
if you don't trust it just download it into your user directory and unzip it there
the only difference is that you have it only available in you user instead of a system wide package for all users on the machine (which likely doesn't matter anyway)
it's safe to use

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,652

Re: Getting the apksigner tool without AUR

I took a look at the PKGBUILD and I didn't understand a lot.

This one? https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/ … uild-tools
Did you *try* to understand it? Which commands do you not understand? Have you considered looking up what they do in general and specifically?

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