mjhjmtu

I want to build Vim from source in Arch Linux to get various non-standard features in the resulting binary. I notice that the PKGBUILD file has URLs in it. Does this mean I can do the build with just this file?

$ asp export vim
(modify PKGBUILD as needed)
$ sudo makepkg

...or do I need to checkout the whole source tree?

Yes. PKGBUILD file is enough for makepkg to build a package. But url= parameter is not the one that holds the sources location. It is the source= parameter.

• PKGBUILD Wiki - source

An array of files needed to build the package. It must contain the
location of the software source, which in most cases is a full HTTP or
FTP URL. The previously set variables pkgname and pkgver can be used
effectively here; e.g.
source=("https://example.com/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz").

Files can also be supplied in the same directory where the PKGBUILD is
located, and their names added to this array. Before the actual build
process starts, all the files referenced in this array will be
downloaded or checked for existence, and makepkg will not proceed if
any is missing.

.install files are recognized automatically by makepkg and should not
be included in the source array. Files in the source array with
extensions .sig, .sign, or .asc are recognized by makepkg as PGP
signatures and will be automatically used to verify the integrity of
the corresponding source file.

The url parameter is just the upstream package site.

As an exampke, take a look at the vim-git package from AUR and it's PKGBUILD file. This AUR package will be built based on git tree for those who need bleeding-edge features.

With asp, you have two options, both documented in the man page. The first is to just grab the build files: export:

export TARGET...

Dump the build source files for each target into a directory of the target’s name in $PWD. Targets can be specified
simply as package to check
out the source files at HEAD, or in repository/package format to checkout the source files which were used to push the
package which exists in
repository.

And checkout also acquires the build files but initialises a git repository in the process.

checkout TARGET...

Create a new git repository containing the full source and history for each of the given targets. The new repository will pull
from the
repository in $ASPROOT and must be updated separately after using asp update. If a checkout occurs on the same filesystem as
$ASPROOT, most of
the metadata can be hard linked, making this a relatively cheap copy.