arch-coder

Recipe card from the charly-coder plugin (Images — the deployable catalog).

arch-coder

Location: the arch-coder box lives in the dedicated opencharly/distro-arch repo, mounted as a git submodule at box/arch. It composes the candies below by git reference to this repo (@github.com/opencharly/charly/candy/<name>:<tag>) rather than copying them; the arch base + arch-builder are bare-local in the same self-contained opencharly/distro-arch submodule (import: []), so the box writes base: arch, builder: {…: arch-builder}. Build / deploy from the submodule, e.g. cd box/arch && charly box build arch-coder (the build verb defaults to the submodule’s charly.yml), or charly --repo opencharly/distro-arch box build arch-coder. The commands below assume you are inside box/arch (or pass -C box/arch).

Arch Linux counterpart of /charly-coder:fedora-coder. Same daily-development surface (AI CLIs, language runtimes, DevOps stack), same rootless posture (uid 1000 + passwordless sudo), same shape of tests — only the package manager (pac: / aur:) and a handful of Arch-specific package names differ.

Definition

arch-coder:
  base: arch                         # bare-local in the self-contained box/arch submodule
  ports:
    - "2222:2222"                 # sshd-wrapper
    - "18765:18765"               # charly-mcp (Streamable HTTP)
  candy:
    # Baseline — identical to fedora-coder
    - agent-forwarding
    - sshd
    - charly
    - charly-mcp
    - container-nesting
    - dbus
    - tmux

    # Language runtimes + managers
    - language-runtimes           # Go + PHP + .NET 9 + python3-devel
    - golang
    - nodejs                      # Arch ships a current Node (v26)
    - rust
    - pixi
    - uv

    # Build + developer tooling
    - build-toolchain
    - dev-tools
    - pre-commit
    - direnv
    - gh
    - typst
    - asciinema

    # AI coding CLIs
    - claude-code
    - codex
    - gemini
    - forgecode
    - oracle

    # DevOps / cloud / infra
    - devops-tools
    - kubernetes
    - docker-ce
    - github-actions
    - google-cloud
    - google-cloud-npm
    - grafana-tools

No explicit user: / uid: / gid: — inherits the defaults. user_policy: defaults to auto; the arch base image declares no base_user: in its distro: vocabulary, so the policy falls through to create mode — the bootstrap emits an idempotent useradd -m -u 1000 -g 1000 user. See /charly-image:image “user_policy” and /charly-build:build “base_user”.

Resolved security posture

Field	Value	Source
cap_add	(empty)	—
security_opt	[unmask=/proc/*]	/charly-distros:container-nesting
devices	[/dev/fuse, /dev/net/tun]	/charly-distros:container-nesting
privileged	false	—
Network	bridge	defaults
UID / user	1000 / user	create mode
sudo	passwordless via /etc/sudoers.d/charly-user	/charly-coder:sshd

No --privileged, no cap_add: ALL, no seccomp=unconfined. The rootless posture is shared with the three sibling power-user boxes (fedora-coder, charly-fedora, charly-arch); /charly-distros:container-nesting proves a privileged posture is unnecessary.

AUR via yay (Arch-specific builder chain)

Unlike fedora-coder (which only uses pixi/npm/cargo builders), arch-coder can also pull from the AUR — because the arch-builder box ships yay and declares builds: [pixi, npm, cargo, aur]. Candies with aur: sections route through arch-builder as their aur builder. Currently no candy in the arch-coder stack uses AUR, but the capability exists for future additions (e.g. niche tools not in [core]/[extra]).

See /charly-distros:arch-builder and /charly-tools:yay.

Cross-distro siblings

arch-coder is one of four cross-distro coder boxes that share the identical 80-line check: block and ~30 identical candies, diverging only in each candy’s package-format section (rpm: / pac: / deb:):

• /charly-coder:fedora-coder — RPM-based, Fedora 43 via fedora-nonfree, uid=1000 user.
• /charly-coder:arch-coder — this box; pacman + optional AUR, uid=1000 user.
• /charly-coder:debian-coder — deb-based, Debian 13 trixie, uid=1000 user.
• /charly-coder:ubuntu-coder — deb-based, Ubuntu 24.04 noble, uid=1000 ubuntu (adopted from base image — see /charly-image:image “user_policy” and /charly-distros:ubuntu).

All four produce the same developer surface. Pick based on which distro family you (or your team / CI) are already standardized on.

The candy stack

Candies in roughly the same groups as fedora-coder, with these Arch-specific notes:

• nodejs — Arch’s nodejs package ships a current Node (v26); no LTS pinning.
• language-runtimes — Arch ships dotnet-sdk in [extra] (no Microsoft repo needed, unlike Debian/Ubuntu). Also drops python3-ramalama (not packaged on Arch — install via uv tool install ramalama).
• dev-tools — /usr/bin/bat ships directly from the bat package (no Debian-style batcat rename needed).
• gh — GitHub CLI from Arch’s extra repo (no third-party apt repo needed).
• container-nesting — Arch equivalents for podman + buildah + skopeo + fuse-overlayfs + crun.

The remaining 25+ candies are identical to fedora-coder at the composition level. Each candy’s pac: section handles the Arch-specific package names.

Quick start

charly box build arch-coder
charly shell arch-coder
# or as a service:
charly config arch-coder
charly start arch-coder
ssh -p 2222 user@localhost           # passwordless sudo

Verification recipe

charly box build arch-coder
charly check box ghcr.io/opencharly/arch-coder:latest
# disposable-container tests against the baked OCI label

charly config arch-coder
charly start arch-coder
charly check box ghcr.io/opencharly/arch-coder:latest
# adds deploy-scope checks: sshd reachable, supervisord, dbus, charly-mcp,
# virtqemud, libvirt session list, KVM domcaps, MCP tool-call probes.

Ports

Port	Service	Bound by
2222	sshd-wrapper (SSH access as user with sudo)	/charly-coder:sshd
18765	charly-mcp (entire charly CLI as MCP tools, Streamable HTTP)	/charly-coder:charly-mcp

Conflicts with /charly-coder:fedora-coder / /charly-coder:debian-coder / /charly-coder:ubuntu-coder on both ports (all coder-family boxes use the same canonical ports). Use -i <instance> or -p <remap> to run alongside.

Related boxes

• /charly-distros:arch — base image (pacman bootstrap, user_policy: auto → create).
• /charly-distros:arch-builder — pixi/npm/cargo/aur multi-stage builder.
• /charly-coder:fedora-coder — canonical RPM-family sibling.
• /charly-coder:debian-coder — deb-family sibling on Debian 13.
• /charly-coder:ubuntu-coder — deb-family sibling on Ubuntu 24.04 (adopt mode).
• /charly-coder:charly-arch — slimmer Arch alternative with just the charly toolchain (no AI CLIs or DevOps tooling).
• /charly-openclaw:openclaw-desktop — adds a browser-streamed Wayland desktop (plus the openclaw gateway, AI CLIs, and a CPU ollama) with the same rootless charly toolchain.

Related layers

• /charly-tools:yay — AUR helper, required for any aur: section
• /charly-tools:charly, /charly-coder:charly-mcp, /charly-distros:container-nesting — shared rootless baseline
• /charly-coder:sshd — cross-distro sudoers via getent passwd 1000
• /charly-coder:language-runtimes, /charly-coder:dev-tools, /charly-coder:gh
• /charly-coder:claude-code, /charly-coder:codex, /charly-coder:gemini, /charly-coder:forgecode, /charly-coder:oracle

Related commands

• /charly-core:shell, /charly-core:charly-config, /charly-core:start, /charly-core:stop, /charly-check:check
• /charly-image:image — user_policy: field reference
• /charly-build:build — base_user: declaration (absent for arch)
• /charly-image:layer — authoring reference

When to use this skill

MUST be invoked when the task involves:

• Building, deploying, or troubleshooting arch-coder.
• Comparing cross-distro parity across the four coder-family boxes.
• Adding aur: sections to candies composed into arch-coder.
• Understanding why Arch doesn’t need Microsoft’s apt repo (dotnet-sdk is in [extra]) or batcat symlinks (bat is packaged as bat).