Setting up an Arch chroot environment on the Steam Deck, then using as NOT a chroot environment

steam-deck-arch-chroot.txt

## So you want to use stuff like 'tmux' and 'lolcat' on the Steam Deck, but they haven't been included in the base OS?
# One way to do it is this.
# 1. setup a chroot environment so there is a file structure in which Pacman can download/unpack packages and their dependencies.
# 2. don't use it as a chroot environment; rather, add the various /bin directories inside it to your $PATH, and create an /etc/ld.so.conf.d/deck-local-arch.conf to permit the bins to find the libs they need.

mkdir -p ~/.local/packer
cd ~/.local
#these steps are required, or else the pacstrap will fail with 'marginal trust' errors
pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring
pacman-key --populate archlinux
pacman-key --refresh-keys
pacstrap -K ./packer base base-devel archlinux-keyring nano tmux htop

## And that's it: now those packages are accessible for you to use as the 'deck' user from within SteamOS. Doesn't work for every package, in particular those requiring a kernel module or services, but most normal shell tools work.

## To make future installations of additional packages simpler, add this to your ~/.bashrc:
alias pac='sudo pacstrap -K /home/deck/.local/packer'

## Then you can simply install stuff with 'pac packagename' e.g. 'pac mosh' to install mosh. Enjoy!

What would be the least annoying way to make the system aware of all the countless python library folders one might end up with in ~/.local/packer?

There would have to be some way to use a fallback root for dynamic linking targets? LD_ORIGIN_DIR is deprecated, and "ldconfig -r" uses the root both for links and targets, which is useless for our purposes. But idk if either would work otherwise anyway, because the former is probably only useful for relative paths found in binaries, and the latter doesn't read binaries at runtime.

I actually don't understand why ldconfig -r doesn't work. It creates the necessary symlinks in packer/usr/lib, but seemingly those are ignored by ld at runtime?

Edit: OOH you need to run ldconfig after ldconfig -r
Still doesn't create symlinks for the python folders tho.

Edit2: Setting PYTHONHOME does the trick.