It turns out the Arch Linux User Repository “AUR” has a strict mandate that packages must be able to be built for the x86_64 CPU architecture. Software not supporting x86_64 like ARM-only software is not permitted for the common Arch Linux AUR repository.
With Arch Linux currently only officially supporting x86_64 Intel/AMD processors and then unofficially having ports to ARM and even 32-bit x86, the AUR repository has a mandate that packages must support x86_64 otherwise they are not welcome in the repository. This is becoming more apparent now with more open-source software coming about catering to the increasing numbers of Apple Silicon and Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 laptops and the like along with ARM servers and also multiple projects supporting x86_64 emulation on AArch64/ARM64.
Back in November it was brought up on aur-general at the time a package “uboot-cm3588-nas” for U-Boot on a given NAS device is AArch64 only and not relevant for other architectures. At the time the AUR guidelines were less clear around mandating x86_64 support. Rejecting that package was done since it doesn’t support x86_64 and the driving factor that for now at least Arch Linux is principally an x86_64 distribution. But if Arch Linux official policy changes around supported CPU architectures, AUR could be more permitting of non-x86_64 software in the future.
More notable now is the fex-emu package in AUR being removed. FEX-Emu is a popular emulator for x86_64 software on AArch64 and allows various games to run on ARM64 systems as well as the likes of Steam / Wine / Proton games. FEX-Emu is now removed from the Arch Linux AUR repository since it’s only relevant to AArch64 / non-x86_64.
The FEX project has acknowledged that the Arch Linux team has removed their official packages from AUR as a result and in turn FEX is no longer officially supporting Arch Linux either.
We’ll see if/when Arch Linux officially supports non-x86_64 processors but for now this restricts the AUR exposure to software only relevant on non-x86_64 systems.
