Arch Linux User Repository

I'm a bit hesitant to install nix, and would rather have pacman take care of the package. I'll flag the package as out of date as it is not building now, and give the original author some time to fix it.

Due to the original maintainer never fixed the bug in prepare(), I have developed a new way to install openclaw, via nix. (Why not curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash? because I want to manage the versions by a package manager, not manually.)

Step 0. If you have installed openclaw-git before, remove it, to avoid conflicts.

openclaw gateway stop
sudo pacman -Rs openclaw-git

Step 1. Install nix.

sudo pacman -S nix

Step 2. Change the nix channel to unstable.

sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable

If you live in China, change to a Chinese domestic channel:

sudo nix-channel --add https://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/nix-channels/nixpkgs-unstable nixpkgs #中科大源
sudo nix-channel --add https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/nix-channels/nixpkgs-unstable nixpkgs #清华源

Step 3. Update channel.

sudo nix-channel --update

Step 4. Create /root/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix. 2026.4.12 should be modified according to the error information of step 5.

{
  permittedInsecurePackages = [
    "openclaw-2026.4.12"
  ];
}

Step 5. Install openclaw via nix-env.

sudo nix-env -iA nixpkgs.openclaw

Mostly, there will be an error. Go back to step 4, and modify config.nix according to the error information.

Nix will automatically download all the dependencies that openclaw needs. This will cost a lot of time, and sometimes it may fail. Just retry, and nix will continue at where it stopped.

Step 6. If you have installed openclaw-git before, run:

openclaw doctor
openclaw gateway restart

Openclaw will automatically fix your configuration, all your work under openclaw-git will be kept.

If bash could not find openclaw command, just reboot your system.

I want to package openclaw-nix to AUR, however I have no experience, knowledge and time to do it. If anyone wants to package openclaw-nix, label me as a contributor.

@Xelinor: Do you have a link available? I'm interested in running this software, but am running into the same failure as @tategotoazarasi (That was fun to type!)

Currently failing in prepare() because openclaw-patch.sh still contains stale patch logic for scripts/bundle-a2ui.sh, and --refresh-patch still hardcodes the old Discord voice manager path. I validated a packaging fix locally: remove the obsolete bundle-a2ui.sh patch block, update --refresh-patch to handle the moved Discord voice manager path dynamically, bump pkgrel to 2, regenerate checksums and .SRCINFO, and the package then builds and installs successfully. I have a clean patch ready from a local commit and can provide it directly if helpful.

Patching package.json...
Patching scripts/bundle-a2ui.sh...
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in prepare().
    Aborting...
 -> error making: openclaw-git-exit status 4
 -> Failed to install the following packages. Manual intervention is required:
openclaw-git - exit status 4

Build fix for current upstream (2026-03-23):

Two patches in openclaw-patch.sh now fail because upstream refactored the target files:

1. src/plugins/install.ts – The skillScanner import anchor no longer exists; both patches are already integrated upstream in a different form. Fix: make the grep guards non-fatal (skip if anchor missing).

2. src/plugins/discovery.ts – The ENOENT workaround suggested in the previous comment causes a TypeScript type error:

error TS2339: Property 'code' does not exist on type '{ ok: false; reason: BoundaryFileOpenFailureReason; error?: unknown; }'

Fix: add // @ts-ignore before the line:

sed -i '/if (!opened.ok) {/a \    \/\/ @ts-ignore\n    if (opened.code === "ENOENT") return null;' src/plugins/discovery.ts

Both fixes together allow the build to complete successfully.

Temporarily do

    sed -i '/if (!opened.ok) {/a \    if (opened.code === "ENOENT") return null;' src/plugins/discovery.ts

There's a patch to be done to fix it https://markdownpastebin.com/?id=77192985af8242a299c5bfcc8d1e28b7

Getting this error consistently trying to install on CachyOS:

==> Starting prepare()...
Patching package.json...
Patching scripts/bundle-a2ui.sh...
Patching scripts/ui.js...
Patching src/discord/voice/manager.ts...
grep: src/discord/voice/manager.ts: No such file or directory
grep: src/discord/voice/manager.ts: No such file or directory
Patching src/agents/skills-install.ts...
Patching src/plugins/discovery.ts...
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in prepare().
    Aborting...
error: failed to build 'openclaw-git-2026.3.8.r5.gf6d0712f50-1':
error: packages failed to build: openclaw-git-2026.3.8.r5.gf6d0712f50-1