| Git Clone URL: | https://aur.archlinux.org/popcorntime.git (read-only, click to copy) |
|---|---|
| Package Base: | popcorntime |
| Description: | Stream movies from torrents. Skip the downloads. Launch, click, watch. |
| Upstream URL: | https://popcorn-time.site/ |
| Licenses: | GPL3 |
| Submitter: | ItachiSan |
| Maintainer: | ItachiSan |
| Last Packager: | ItachiSan |
| Votes: | 61 |
| Popularity: | 1.37 |
| First Submitted: | 2016-03-01 20:36 (UTC) |
| Last Updated: | 2025-09-24 19:02 (UTC) |
Hello, ItachiSan
thanks you for support packade i'm developer of https://github.com/popcorn-time-ru
Yes, it's a shame that it all happened this way and it looks like nothing good will come out of the old repository, but the code is saved and the server is working. I only found out about this when I was tagged on Reddit. The program works perfectly, there was no point in changing it, but now it looks like I'll have to do something about it.
Hello everyone,
tl;dr: maintainer drama, trying to keep the source the same I packaged.
Important: this is a 10+ year story, so most of the info below is from memory and quick research today.
The reason I changed the upstream source is due to the fact the initial project somehow nuked the repository I was tracking.
For avoiding some typing, GH = github.com
Initially, the GH/popcorntime/popcorntime repo was the original one. It was taken down very early and they moved to their own infrastructure git.popcorntime.io, as you can see from the initial AUR4 commit:
Then the git.popcorntime.io project was taken down and the maintainers that kept working on this moved to the GH/popcorn-official spot. They also owned popcorntime.app at the time.
Somehow that domain was unavailable anywhere, thus they set up popcorntime.site. They also had a second team GH/popcorn-official-ru for binary builds and other stuff.
This was the stable situation for all these last years.
Then, in the past weeks, the repo I tracked for the last years disappeared, the redirect to GH/popcorntime/popcorntime was in place and the app was new from scratch. I noticed this when checking whether other AUR packages needed updates.
I thus decided to point to a fork that resembles the most the source I was familiar with and not the new repository; I am absolutely fine moving this to a separate package using this source code e.g. popcorntime-ru and make this to track the new official one. Not sure whether I will use thus maintain it; I rarely use the app at all and maintained for fun more than anything TBH.
Hmm, the changes at:
If you notice, the prior popcorntime used here was:
https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop
But if you notice on popcorn-official, it was moved to legacy, whatever that means:
https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop-legacy
Both are pretty similar, being javascript projects. If you just enter the URL:
https://github.com/popcorn-official
It remains at popcorn-official, but for some weird reason when you provide its no longer existent URL:
https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop
GH redirects to:
https://github.com/popcorntime/popcorntime
Which doesn't seem to be the same project, neither the same contributors. Perhaps popcorn-official moved to legacy because the project was not experiencing too much progress?
Is GH doing wrong favoring this redirection? Are both projects related other than by the name?
What's clear is that popcorn-time-ru seems way closer (also with not much progress too) to popcorn-official, than popcorntime is, and perhaps that's @ItachiSan motivation. Who defines the catalog of providers on popcorntime, and how come it's mentioned as a feature that the catalog is legal... At any rate that might be close to the motivation...
Why does this pull from the popcorntime-ru fork rather than popcorn time? This fork is not up-to-date
Found the issue, I'm currently using nodejs 22.0.0, wheres extra nodejs is 21.7.3. If reverting back to 21.7.3, popcorntime builds just fine. Now the issue is alredy fix for the 22 new series, but it hasn't been released.
The bug can be found at node issue, and the fix on the already merged commit node fix.
That for the interested ones. BTW, I don't see nodejs as a direct dep, though it is. However both npm and yarn directly depend on nodejs, so it's covered.
For now the workaroung for me is to revert nodejs back, build popcorntime, and the move back to 2.0.0.
Thanks !
With last update, from 0.5.0-2 to 0.5.1-1, failing to build wit:
[4/8] ⠠ postinstall-postinstall
error /home/vasqueja/.pkgs/src/laur/popcorntime/src/popcorn-desktop/node_modules/guppy-pre-commit: Command failed.
Exit code: 1
Command: guppy pre-commit
Arguments:
Directory: /home/vasqueja/.pkgs/src/laur/popcorntime/src/popcorn-desktop/node_modules/guppy-pre-commit
Output:
/home/vasqueja/.pkgs/src/laur/popcorntime/src/popcorn-desktop/node_modules/guppy-cli/node_modules/vinyl-fs/lib/fileOperations.js:150
file.stat.atime = timesDiff.atime;
^
TypeError: Cannot assign to read only property 'atime' of object '#<Stats>'
at onFutimes (/home/vasqueja/.pkgs/src/laur/popcorntime/src/popcorn-desktop/node_modules/guppy-cli/node_modules/vinyl-fs/lib/fileOperations.js:150:27)
@PowerdollKirby you probably need to synchronize your repos (pacman -Sy).
error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from america.mirror.pkgbuild.com : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from mirror.theo546.fr : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from mirror.ufscar.br : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from mirrors.neusoft.edu.cn : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from mirror.moson.org : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from archlinux.thaller.ws : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from mirror.f4st.host : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from mirror.cyberbits.eu : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from md.mirrors.hacktegic.com : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed retrieving file 'nodejs-21.7.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst' from mirror.sunred.org : The requested URL returned error: 404 warning: failed to retrieve some files error: failed to commit transaction (failed to retrieve some files) Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded. -> Failed to install layer, rolling up to next layer.error:error installing repo packages resolving dependencies... looking for conflicting packages...
@ItachSan, now 0.5.0 is available.
@illandrc, in general *-bin packages just wraps around a binary package, like a deb or a rpm one, or a tarball binary if offered by the application. Non *-bin packages usually build the package. Build doesn't necessarily means compiling into machine language, but rather nodejs/npm/yarn sort of builds, which are usually used to build electron apps. popcorntime builds one of such electron apps...
Hello,
What's the difference between popcorntime and popcorntime-bin packages?
Thanks! Good day.
Pinned Comments
ItachiSan commented on 2025-09-26 13:55 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
tl;dr: maintainer drama, trying to keep the source the same I packaged.
Important: this is a 10+ year story, so most of the info below is from memory and quick research today.
The reason I changed the upstream source is due to the fact the initial project somehow nuked the repository I was tracking.
For avoiding some typing, GH = github.com
Initially, the GH/popcorntime/popcorntime repo was the original one. It was taken down very early and they moved to their own infrastructure git.popcorntime.io, as you can see from the initial AUR4 commit:
https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/commit/PKGBUILD?h=popcorntime&id=def40ec2aff310643d29d5295d4ac3b648421477
Then the git.popcorntime.io project was taken down and the maintainers that kept working on this moved to the GH/popcorn-official spot. They also owned popcorntime.app at the time.
Somehow that domain was unavailable anywhere, thus they set up popcorntime.site. They also had a second team GH/popcorn-official-ru for binary builds and other stuff.
This was the stable situation for all these last years.
Then, in the past weeks, the repo I tracked for the last years disappeared, the redirect to GH/popcorntime/popcorntime was in place and the app was new from scratch. I noticed this when checking whether other AUR packages needed updates.
I thus decided to point to a fork that resembles the most the source I was familiar with and not the new repository; I am absolutely fine moving this to a separate package using this source code e.g. popcorntime-ru and make this to track the new official one. Not sure whether I will use thus maintain it; I rarely use the app at all and maintained for fun more than anything TBH.
ItachiSan commented on 2018-07-24 21:01 (UTC) (edited on 2021-06-14 09:35 (UTC) by ItachiSan)
You are free to report issues regarding the packaging here! Please read all the info of this message as they include quite some information.
Be aware that sometimes the package will fail to build because of outdated upstream and updated dependency, which will require me some time to test and solve the problem.
I do also have life stuff, packaging is a free-time activity.
I believe I have an issue that is Arch-related and not upstream related
I too found out only recently this way to debug the app (as of: 2021-06-13), which helps immensely.
Whenever reporting here or on the Github issues, please provide the output of the command:
In case you are forwarding the log to a file, as the log entries will end in
stderr, remember to redirectstderrtostdoutInfo regarding the package
The package uses the sources available at: https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop. I am aware of the different clones and branches; I do still believe that this code is acceptable (not affected itself from malware).
This package uses a custom NW.js build provided from the PopcornTime team; essentially, a custom compiled browser. While this won't affect you as it should be used only within the app, you are here informed that I have no power over this component.
The above point stands as the official NW.js Chromium source lacks multiple modern codecs, such as AC3 and HEVC (H.265).
Earlier this package used the official nw.js toolchain provided available at https://dl.nwjs.io/ and the prebuilt FFmpeg library with additional codecs available at https://github.com/iteufel/nwjs-ffmpeg-prebuilt/ . This was because the nw.js toolchain provided by the PopcornTime team can not be proven as non-malware easily. However, due to point 3, this approach was reverted. You are free to use an older PKGBUILD with the appropriate variable updates to re-enable this, however you will miss support for recent codecs.
In addition, the PKGBUILD won't point to the Git release reference but will also include important commits, for e.g. security reasons or providers changes.