project internals

This section provides a technical deep dive into how gaur operates, its architecture, and the design decisions that power its interactive experience.

Architecture Overview

gaur is built using a modular architecture that separates the UI logic from the system package management operations.

Component Breakdown

1. The Model (model.go): The central state of the application. It holds configuration, package lists, search results, and UI state (like selected index and marked packages).
2. The View (view.go, styles.go): Responsible for rendering the TUI using the Lip Gloss library. It calculates layout dimensions and applies themes.
3. The Commands (commands.go): Handles interaction with the host system. This includes executing pacman, the AUR helper (paru/yay), and fzf for fuzzy searching.
4. The Dashboard (feature_dashboard.go): A specialized module that gathers system statistics, calculates disk usage, and identifies cache hogs.

Working with AUR Helpers

gaur doesn’t reinvent package management. Instead, it acts as a high-fidelity wrapper around established tools:

• Searching: When you type in Install mode, gaur triggers a debounced search that queries the local pacman database and the AUR (via the configured helper).
• Fuzzy Matching: Results are piped through fzf for lightning-fast, relevance-ranked matching.
• Hand-off: For operations that require user interaction (like password entry or conflict resolution), gaur uses tea.ExecProcess to hand control over to the AUR helper in the terminal, ensuring full interactivity and safety.

Real-time Refresh Logic

After any operation that modifies the system state (install, remove, update), gaur triggers a unified refresh. This re-scans the system to update dashboard stats, repo distributions, and package lists instantly, ensuring the UI always reflects the current state of your Arch Linux installation.