[cookiecaper]

It's not Gentoo, but in practice, many frequently-used packages remain in the AUR and an AUR helper to make that transparent is standard kit for anyone using the box as a workstation. It's much more "source-based" than it may appear at first glance. I have ~15G of self-built packages sitting in my PKGDEST right now, if that counts for anything.

[techntoke]

Have you checked if they have official packages yet? I was surprised to find that half my AUR packages already were in official recently. Font packages and Android Studio can easily take up 5G. Also, you don't need an AUR helper.

[danShumway]

Agreed; I main Arch and I very rarely install packages from AUR. Rare enough that I've never felt the need to install a helper, it would just be unnecessary clutter.

I suspect many users will need to dip into AUR once or twice for unsual packages, but I'm mildly skeptical that most users need to dip into AUR often enough that compile times would be a serious argument against static linking.

[zenhack]

> an AUR helper to make that transparent is standard kit for anyone using the box as a workstation

Fwiw, I've been using arch as my daily driver continuously for 14 years and haven't ever really felt the strong need for an AUR helper.

[ChristianBundy]

How do you ensure that all of your AUR packages are up-to-date? The makepkg workflow makes installation easy but I didn't update my AUR packages very consistently until I used a helper.