1

The exported log:

Shelly aur install log
Generated: 2026-05-21T23:13:30.4023659-07:00
Packages: yt-dlp
Exit Code: 255
Success: False

=== STDERR ===
[Shelly][DEBUG_LOG] Resolved Architecture: x86_64
[Shelly][DEBUG_LOG] Registering Architecture: x86_64_v3
[Shelly][DEBUG_LOG] Registering Architecture: x86_64_v2
[Shelly][Shelly]Installing packages…
[Shelly][ALPM_ERROR]Package ‘phantomjs’ not found in any sync database.

=== STDOUT ===
Installing packages…
Error: Package ‘phantomjs’ not found in any sync database.

2

Something wrong because phantomjs exists .. though it is in the AUR .. but of course you should be able to build an AUR package that depends on other AUR packages.

3

In Shelley yt-dlp was shown to be in the “extra” repository. I tried the installation twice and after submitting the report above it crossed my mind that possibly the server(s) involved might have been out of sync. I’ll give it another try and deeper look tomorrow after some rest.

4

Ah. Right.

yt-dlp is in the repos.. it relying on phantomjs .. which is in the AUR (and not in the repos) is odd.

5

phantomjs seems to be an optional dependency for yt-dlp, if that matters.

6

Years ago—back when I was using Manjaro—I ran into problems whenever I tried to install “phantomjs” as a dependency for “yt-dlp.” Since then, I have made a point of deselecting that package. I don’t know what purpose it serves, but I’ve never missed it.

edit:

So, I believe that the error is not related to Shelly itself.

7

Shelly is still rather immature software, and I’m not familiar with it. Since phantomjs is optional, it should not prevent the installation of yt-dlp. optional dependencies should be selectable but maybe they are not?

With Octopi, it’s listed as optional, but when installing yt-dlp, phantomjs is not a selectable option since it’s not found in the repository, so installing yt-dlp succeeds without error.

Installing phantomjs from AUR is possible but it does take a long time because of the dependencies that need to be built.

You may want to contact the Shelly developers, and unlike @zompel I believe it looks like it’s their error for not correctly handling dependencies.

8

When I tried to install yt-dlp last night, all of the dependencies were checked including phantomjs. I retried installing it this morning and I took zompel’s suggestion of deselecting phantomjs. I was able to successfully install yt-dlp and just now download the video file that prompted me to install yt-dlg originally.

Sorry for incorrectly spelling Shelly in my initial post. I’ll research the process and contact the Shelly developers as suggested.

9

I just asked about this issue on the Shelly github account and the almost instant reply was:

“It’s a bug that has been fixed in the upcoming release <3”

Sorry, but why don’t you just install yt-dlp with pacman? Then you won’t have any of this trouble :wink:

11

Let’s just say that I prefer to make my errors in a GUI as opposed to the command line. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

That is exactly the mistake you are making.

Get yt-dlp from the extra repository. It works.

13

Since it’s not even a year old, I’m of the opinion that Shelly should be listed as beta quality software and as such should notify users when first using it.

14

I’m relatively cautious too when it comes to newer programs as well, particularly those programs that could impact system functionality and performance. I didn’t see installing yt-dlp as likely affecting system stability, say like a boot loader related application might, so I thought it would be a good (safer?) program to test initially. I do use pacman though I have used Octopi in the past as I would like to be able to eventually use a reliable GUI. I figured that reporting my experience here was appropriate. I was/am not knowledgeable about how various repositories interact when installing applications.

As an aside, when I took zompel’s suggestion of deselecting phantomjs when trying to install it above I mistakenly indicated above that phantomjs was a dependency when in fact it was listed as being optional in Shelly. Unchecking that option allowed for successful installation with Shelly.

15

Despite all the shelly fanfare and regardless of which bugs in particular it fixed recently .. the fact is that it is not a pacman frontend.

Which to me already disqualifies it as an official or reliable package manager.

Octopi is a wrapper for pacman and optionally supported aur-helpers.

As such it continues to be the only GUI I would recommend.

That all said an optional dependency is and should be optional - it does seem that shelly now preselects all of the optional dependencies but that the user can deselect them. While maybe the reverse of what I would prefer (optionals not preselected) this would be acceptable behavior.

16

:100:

Yes, the opposite of pre-selecting all the optional dependencies is they way to go. Imagine a new user deciding to go with something like dracut, they’d get a whole lot of irrelevant packages if they just go with the flow of pre-selection.