🐚 Shelly-ALPM v3.2.0 — The Bug Bash

Shelly v3.2.0 is a bug bash: a round of fixes for the things that get between you and your packages. Since v3.1.10, we’ve tackled Flatpak failures, stubborn tray icons, missed restart detection, AUR build errors, and package information that wasn’t telling the whole story.

A few quality-of-life improvements came along too, including multi-package downgrades, AppImage update discovery, and a choice of terminal for updates.

🐛 Flatpak and permissions, untangled

Fixed the Flatpak regression affecting Arch Linux after v3.1.10. Elevated operations now hand work back to the invoking user with setpriv, preserving the login session context needed for Flatpak’s system-helper authentication.

User-cache handling also gets a cleanup. Shelly writes the invoking user’s cache using that user’s credentials, including when launched through supported privilege-elevation tools, and preserves absolute XDG_CACHE_HOME overrides.

Existing ownership problems can be repaired from your regular user session with:

shelly utility --fix-permissions

This repairs Shelly’s directories; it does not change ownership of the parent ~/.cache directory.

🔔 A tray icon that keeps up

• 🔄 Stale update status: The notification service now watches package database changes and refreshes its status after package operations. (#2151)
• 🔌 Endless reconnect loops: When DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS is missing, Shelly falls back to $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/bus. If neither provides a usable address, it reports the problem instead of retrying forever. (#2137)
• 🖥️ Your terminal, your updates: Choose the terminal used to launch updates from the notification service. (#2148)

🔄 Restart detection, actually detecting

Post-upgrade restart and reboot checks were reading some /proc files as empty because those files report a size of zero. Shelly now reads their contents correctly, restoring the information those checks depend on.

The scan also stops treating a deleted /etc/ld.so.cache mapping as a stale shared library, avoiding misleading restart recommendations after ldconfig runs. (#2149)

🧱 AUR builds with fewer surprises

• 🧩 Computed architecture lists: Fix InvalidArchitectureDirective failures when a PKGBUILD derives arch from an associative array. Unresolved values are validated after evaluation. (#2144)
• 🌿 Git source races: Finish cached Git mirror maintenance before cloning build sources, preventing the two operations from racing. (#2123)
• 📝 Useful metadata errors: Package-assembly failures now name the rejected metadata field, making broken recipes easier to diagnose. (#2113)
• ⚙️ Clearer build configuration: Expanded shellybuild.conf documentation explains configuration precedence, compiler flags, and portable versus host-specific settings.

📦 Package information you can trust

Installed package versions now take priority in the UI and CLI search results, rather than being replaced by the repository version. RLPM also correctly reports installation status and dates. (#2044, #2143)

Upgrade previews now include repository package replacements, making it clearer what will change before you confirm. (#2119)

Behind the scenes, unnecessary RLPM database snapshot hashing has been removed, reducing repeated database work.

🧹 Cleaning up the cleanup

purify now recognises leftover pacman download-XXXXXX directories, including those containing partial downloads, and includes them in its cleanup plan. (#2150)

Removing a stale database lock from the desktop app also runs asynchronously, keeping the interface responsive while authentication completes. (#2142)

🖼️ AppImages, better connected

AppImage desktop integration now uses the application’s shipped desktop-file identity and removes superseded launcher entries during updates, addressing naming mismatches and duplicate menu entries. (#2134)

Update support gains embedded update-information discovery and .zsync control-file support. GitHub asset matching honours embedded filename patterns, and release selection receives additional fixes. (#2146, #2147)

✨ A few extras between the fixes

• ⏪ Downgrade packages together: Select older versions of multiple installed packages and install them in one transaction. --target remains a single-package option. (#2132)
• 🎨 Readable console output: The desktop transaction view gains ANSI colour and formatting support. (#2138)
• 📥 Download speeds: CLI progress lines now show transfer speed. (#2139)
• ✅ Recommended apps in batches: Select multiple applications from the Recommended page for installation.

🌍 Translations and thanks

🇻🇳 Added Vietnamese translations for the desktop UI and notifications.
🇦🇩 Updated the Catalan translation.

❤️ Thank you to everyone who reported a bug, supplied a reproduction, tested a fix, or contributed a patch. This bash was built around those reports.