On Archlinux it is not recommended to update only one package with the package manager pacman
. Let’s say I have 11 packages, and one of them is extra/firefox
(true story). Updating only a pacman -S firefox
could introduce problems, but installing a new single package if it wasn’t there is okay.
So my question is, could we get around this by removing and installing the same package again in one go: pacman -Rs firefox && pacman -S firefox
It is only a partial upgrade if you update your databases, without upgrading the rest of your system. If you try to
pacman -S firefox
, and it gives you a 404, you have to both update your pacman databases, and upgrade your packages. This will only give you a 404 if you cleaned your package cache, and your package is out of date. Usually,-S
on an already installed package will reinstall it from cache. This does not cause a partial upgrade.If you run
pacman -Sy
, everything you install is now considered a partial upgrade, and will break if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. In order to avoid a partial upgrade, you should never update databases (-Sy
) without upgrading packages (-Su
). This is usually combined inpacman -Syu
.