Shelly v3.1.3 gives your AUR cache a cleanup button, your AppImages their own environment settings, and the package builder another round of fixes for the PKGBUILDs you use every day.
There is plenty happening on the desktop, too: Flathub links take you to the app you wanted, package conflict prompts explain what is being removed, and the parallel download setting now does what it says. Behind the scenes, isolated builds gain Shelly's own provisioning helper and new tools for build automation.
🧹 Give your AUR cache some breathing room
Built AUR packages can add up. You can now preview and remove those archives with --aur-cache:
# See what would be removed
shelly purify standard --aur-cache --dry-run
# Review and confirm the cleanup
shelly purify standard --aur-cacheThis removes all built AUR package archives and their matching signatures from Shelly's cache. Your PKGBUILDs, checkout history, sources, and build directories stay in place. You can also combine it with --cache to clean the standard package cache in the same command.
Prefer to handle cleanup yourself after upgrades? There is a setting for that:
shelly config set DisableCacheClean trueIt skips the cleanup prompt and deletion during shelly upgrade all and its aliases. Cleanup remains enabled by default, and standalone shelly upgrade standard keeps its existing behavior.
🎛️ Your AppImages, your environment
Each installed AppImage can now have its own environment variables, configurable from the UI or CLI:
shelly config appimage "MyApp" --set-env "MY_VARIABLE=my-value"
shelly config appimage "MyApp" --unset-env "MY_VARIABLE"Replace MyApp with the exact installed AppImage name. Overrides apply when launching from the desktop or through shelly run, and they survive AppImage updates. The CLI also supports clearing or replacing the full set of overrides.
StaticURL update checks now follow redirects correctly, too.
🏗️ More PKGBUILDs feeling at home
This release fixes several cases where valid package recipes could trip up Shelly's native builder:
- Fixed shell here-string and command-substitution parsing that could leave build wrapper scripts with syntax errors.
- Added a consistent
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCHthroughout PKGBUILD evaluation, build steps, and package metadata. - Improved dependency planning for conditional arrays, architecture-specific dependencies, and split packages.
- Improved archive detection and extraction, including extensionless archives.
- Added standalone gzip/Unix compress, bzip2, xz, and zstd decompression before
prepare(), respecting source aliases andnoextract. - Fixed empty optional file assignments such as
install=''being rejected as unsafe paths. - Failed binary stripping now produces a warning and keeps the original file. This fixes builds such as
pithat include binaries the host's strip tool cannot process. - Fixed source verification with multiple PGP signatures to follow signature-status handling, plus keyserver argument ordering during key imports.
🛠️ Shellystrap and build automation
Isolated builds now use shellystrap, Shelly's own libalpm-based helper, to provision fresh build roots. This replaces the pacstrap dependency and keeps provisioning inside private namespaces.
Required public source-signing keys can now travel from the invoking user's keyring into the isolated build. Reviewed-file staging, dependency checks against freshly synchronized private repository databases, and cancellation cleanup across privilege elevation have also been improved.
For automated builders, this release adds:
shelly --version --jsonfor version and capability discovery.- JSON build review and result output, with review-digest validation.
- Configurable package output destinations.
shelly resolveto map exact repository or AUR package names to package bases.
Using isolated builds? You need unshare from util-linux alongside systemd-nspawn. For unattended builds, import required source-signing keys into the invoking user's keyring beforehand; --no-confirm does not approve missing-key imports.
✨ A smoother desktop
- Flathub links open the right app, even if Shelly is already running or still loading its catalog. Flatpak reference files and AppStream links are handled, too.
- Flatpak details gain uninstall controls, installed and verified indicators, better remote selection, and clearer loading feedback.
- Conflict prompts name the packages involved, including which installed package will be removed and what replaces it.
- Tray checks can follow your schedule with a cron mode that waits for the configured weekly time before the first check. Weekly scheduling also no longer depends on the symbolic tray icon setting.
- Fixed the installed AUR view failing to restore correctly after a reload.
- Improved dependency download progress, long package-name display, and error messages across the CLI, TUI, and GTK interface.
- Support setup now skips dependencies you already have installed.
⚡ Parallel means parallel
Repository database and package downloads now respect ParallelDownloadCount. The setting accepts 1–255, with a default of 100. Older configurations with invalid values fall back to the default.
🌍 Translations and thanks
Italian and Simplified Chinese translations have been updated. Thank you to everyone contributing translations, reporting troublesome packages, and helping test the fixes in this release!
Full Changelog: v3.1.2…234f1e0a
Release pull request: #1876