Commando

A fast utility to search which packages provide a specific command on Arch and Arch based systems.

Why

Because pacman -F was too slow to be set as fallback for a "command not found" exception in a shell.

How to use it

Database creation/update

Right after installing it, create your database with:

$ commando -u

# for verbose output (recommended outside of scripts)
$ commando -vu

or you could try the -a flag, if want to include AUR packages (trough the use of chaotic aur repos).

$ commando -ua

# for verbose output (recommended outside of scripts)
$ commando -vua

It may take a while depending on your connection speed and your computer, but you only need to create/update your database the first time and every once in a while. I'd suggest perhaps once every one or two months, but it's entirely up to you.

Also do note that (in case you were using the AUR flag) chaotic aur repos might take a while to update, so don't worry if you can't instantly find some new software. Do mind though that AUR updates way more frequently than normal repos, so you might consider updating your database more often.

Database search

Now you're ready to search with commando!

Just search your command with:

$ commando command-name

For example, if I'd want to see which packages provide the ls command, I would just do:

$ commando ls

# for verbose output (recommended outside of scripts)
$ commando -v ls

For further usage instructions, please execute:

$ commando --help

Note: command search is case sensitive, this means that, for example, searching for LS won't give the same results as ls

How to install

AUR

You can install commando directly from the Arch User Repository.

You can find the package here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/commando

Or use any aur helper such as paru and yay to install it.

# With paru
$ paru -S commando

# With yay
$ yay -S commando

Cargo

If you have cargo installed and your $PATH is set up properly you can use

$ cargo install arch-commando

to download, build and install commando

Building

You can compile it by cloning this repo and then executing:

$ cargo build --release

Then you'll have your binary placed in ./target/release/commando, simply move it to somewhere in your $PATH.

Credits

Thanks to BRA1L0R for the refactor.