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
This is an excellent answer and I wish I knew all of this when starting to use archlinux. “Arch does not support partial upgrades” is something you can read everywhere, but it’s rare to find such a good explanation of what exactly a partial upgrade is, and which commands lead to it.
I only learned about all of this when I got into some broken state by randomly running pacman commands.
Everyone, be like this guy. This guy explains stuff well. Newbies need stuff explained.