When comparing Cower vs aurutils, the Slant community recommends aurutils for most people. In the question“What are the best AUR helpers for Arch-based Linux distributions?” aurutils is ranked 12th while Cower is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose aurutils is:
By default, packages are built and stored in a custom local repository, allowing packages to be installed, upgraded, and removed through `pacman -S` the same way official repository packages are.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Very powerful search
Pro Minimalistic & Simple
Some other solutions are like using a chainsaw as a butterknife, yeah it goes through the butter, but then it also goes through your leg, and you really wish you would have just grabbed the stick of butter and smeared it on your bread with your hands.
Cower is the butterknife. It's easier than maintaining everything by hand but also forces you to pay attention (which you need to do anyway)
Pro Support for custom repositories
By default, packages are built and stored in a custom local repository, allowing packages to be installed, upgraded, and removed through pacman -S
the same way official repository packages are.
Pro Excellent split package and dependency support
Packages are built using tsort dependency ordering to ensure proper build order. The built packages are available in a custom repo and the user can easily install whichever parts of a split package they want.
Pro Support for clean chroot builds
aurutils has seamless support for building packages in the same chroot containers used for building official repository packages.
Cons
Con No automatic build support.
Con Does not support the modern RPC interface
cower was never updated to take advantage of the multiinfo support introduced in https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/17583 and therefore puts a heavy burden on the AUR server in addition to sometimes suffering timeouts. Users of cower are heavily encouraged to migrate to its successor, auracle (created by the cower developer as the next generation of cower).