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
That’s all you need to know. As long as you always use
pacman -Syu
you will be fine.pacman -Sy
is the real problem. The wiki page is pretty clear about the sequences of commands that are problematic https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported.This isn’t correct. It won’t look up the new version. Assuming that the system was in a consistent state it will download the exact same package that you deleted. The system only ever “updates” when you run
pacman -Sy
. Until you use-y
all packages are effectively pinned at a specific version. If the version that gets installed is different than the one you removed it probably means that you were breaking the partial update rule previously.