I want to build some things from source and AUR-git packages. The promise that this would be stream-lined was one of the reasons I'm trying out Arch, so I want to get this right. The ABS and AUR seem a bit weird in some respects to me. I haven't touched the ABS yet; just looked.
Question 1: I like to build in /tmp/ when possible. Is there a mechanism, or an other way of building, that can correctly point the debugging symbols to the source location?
Question 2: Git/svn is optimized to reel in accumulative changes. Is there a way I can keep the repositories on disk, so that an AUR-git package doesn't need to retrieve the whole source again?
The reason I haven't touched the ABS yet is because it seems to want to manage all packages installed.

ABS does not manage packages at all. It just provides a simple means of getting all relevant files (PKGBUILD, patches, additional files) for building packages. Packages are still managed with pacman.

Weapon S,

I suggest that you use pacman in conjunction with PKGBUILD, as recommended by Arch:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...lling_packages

Avoid using yaourt, make sure that base-devel is installed and then create a Builds directory in your Home folder.

Have a look at post #2 on:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-a-4175538013/