Arch Linux User Repository

Good day everyone! As you may have noticed I am the new maintainer of this package. I made a couple of changes in the PKGBUILD:

• Use the latest electron build (electron39 as of this writing). As long as Franz works with the latest electron build then we will always trail with it moving forward.

• Use system npm and nodejs for building. This is how all electron-based packages are packaged in Arch repo.

I will continue to monitor how Franz works across different Arch-based distros. So far my tests works fine.

I will be able to support issues only pertaining to AUR installation. Any other issues related to the functioning of Franz is best dealt by the upstream. However, Franz was not updated for almost a year now and almost all dependencies are deprecated and have vulnerabilities. I will contact the upstream to see if they can release a dependency bumps release.

Good day everyone! As you may have noticed I am the new maintainer of this package. I made a couple of changes in the PKGBUILD:

• Use the latest electron build (electron39 as of this writing). As long as Franz works with the latest electron build then we will always trail with it moving forward.

• Use system npm and nodejs for building. This is how all electron-based packages are packaged in Arch repo.

I will continue to monitor how Franz works across different Arch-based distros. So far my tests works fine.

I will be able to support issues only pertaining to AUR installation. Any other issues related to the functioning of Franz is best dealt by the upstream. However, Franz was not updated for almost a year now and almost all dependencies are deprecated and have vulnerabilities. I will contact the upstream to see if they can release a dependency bumps release.

Hello to whomever is listening,

Since I am not using this package, I will disown it. As of today (2026-01-11) the package is up to date.

Feel free to poke me for maintenance help and hope someone will pick it up soon!

Is this even developed anymore?

nvm install failed in prepare() when build in chroot

==> Starting prepare()...
--> Using Electron package:   electron
--> Electron package version: 20.0.0
--> Install toolchain with nvm
Found '/build/franz/src/franz/.nvmrc' with version <16.13.0>
Downloading and installing node v16.13.0...
Binary download failed, trying source.

Strangely adding || true after the nvm install fixes the problem somehow:

==> Starting prepare()...
--> Using Electron package:   electron
--> Electron package version: 20.0.0
--> Install toolchain with nvm
Found '/build/franz/src/franz/.nvmrc' with version <16.13.0>
Downloading and installing node v16.13.0...
Downloading https://nodejs.org/dist/v16.13.0/node-v16.13.0-linux-x64.tar.xz...
#################################################################################################################################################################### 100.0%
Computing checksum with sha256sum
Checksums matched!
Now using node v16.13.0 (npm v8.1.0)
Creating default alias: default -> 16.13.0 (-> v16.13.0)
--> Install modules dependencies with lerna

Hello, Electron update make black screen chat Franz.

libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null) [33404:0421/132158.588869:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(377)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process. [33404:0421/132159.713285:ERROR:gl_surface_presentation_helper.cc(260)] GetVSyncParametersIfAvailable() failed for 1 times! Error sending from webFrameMain: Error: Render frame was disposed before WebFrameMain could be accessed

The description is misleading, it offers a subscription based services, but the first tier is offered

I get the following error:

==> Starting prepare()...
--> Using Electron package:   electron12
--> Electron package version: 12.2.3
/home/trougnouf/.cache/pacaur/franz/PKGBUILD: line 40: /usr/share/nvm/init-nvm.sh: No such file or directory
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in prepare().
    Aborting...
:: failed to verify integrity or prepare franz package

edit: sorry I don't know why pacaur didn't install the nvm dependency first.

edit: I then had to enter the following command: bash /usr/share/nvm/nvm.sh use --delete-prefix v12.16.3, no further issues so far.

edit: nvm

npm ERR! code EINTEGRITY
npm ERR! Verification failed while extracting gulp-server-livereload@1.9.2:
npm ERR! Verification failed while extracting gulp-server-livereload@1.9.2:
npm ERR! sha1-PbIn80Y8/k8pv2WgE7qhYuKnQMY= integrity checksum failed when using sha1: wanted sha1-PbIn80Y8/k8pv2WgE7qhYuKnQMY= but got sha512-CmAz3D6kqLfbSsaU2HFFnA7XROHDKVRV3aitXdwLSFT1xTLGwo03GYfzQ/ewZmkvZJ5QUYxpVur6NWNHiqEE3Q== sha1-5JXRshWak3xTZiDLqoF286FMeno=. (4964 bytes)
...
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/trougnouf/.cache/pacaur/franz/src/npm_cache/_logs/2022-01-06T16_38_46_150Z-debug.log
lerna ERR! npm install exited 1 in 'franz'
lerna ERR! npm install exited 1 in 'franz'
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in prepare().
    Aborting...

edit: it worked after cleaning out the cache

Hi @billypilgrim,

Thanks for the feedback :)

I agree with you about the pkgrel bumping being unusual. I followed the standard practice for the official packages where rebuilding happens when a dependency is upgraded. This was normal when using bleeding-edge Electron, which however caused many issues due to the official Franz developers using older versions.

I was unaware of the "let the users rebuild" thing for AUR packages and I am TBH glad you pointed this out. I will change the PKGBUILD right away in order to avoid future manual bumping. :)

I will also update the warning posters accordingly :)

About the re-nicing, as I use the official Electron 12 Arch build for running Franz the path is as it is; is it possible for you to renice given a CLI argument? You have guaranteed the Franz app.asar as first CLI argument.

@ItachiSan: Thanks for maintaining this. I just want to say that I'm really not sure about the whole "flag out of date if electron changes" thing. Really, packages should only be flagged out of date if the package itself is out of date. Otherwise it is really misusing the feature.

Bumping the pkgrel manually in the PKGBUILD every time electron is updated is not actually particularly helpful. What it means in practice is that I end up manually rebuilding franz when a new version of electron is available (which is totally fine) and then at random points a rebuild is forced by you changing the pkgrel (which is annoying). Don't assume that everyone will be upgrading their electron package at exactly the same moment -- people are using different mirrors which will be updated at different points.

If the package really does need to be rebuilt with every minor release of electron (this doesn't actually seem especially likely to me tbh), then just let users do it manually. Absolutely loads of packages on the AUR depend on a shared library (for example) and need to be rebuilt if the dependency changes. This is completely normal and the wiki explicitly states that it is the user's responsibility to upgrade the package manually: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository#Installing_and_upgrading_packages

Thanks again for being a maintainer :-)