pacman(8)

NAME
pacman - package manager utility

SYNOPSIS
pacman <operation> [options] <package> [package] ...

DESCRIPTION
pacman is a package management utility. Package information is maintained in a basic text format for easy tweaking, if necessary, and packages are in a standard gzipped tar format.

OPERATIONS

-A, --add
    Add a package to the system. Package will be uncompressed into the installation root and the database will be updated.

-R, --remove
    Remove a package from the system. Files belonging to the specified package will be deleted, and the database will be updated. Note that files with .conf extensions will be renamed with .conf.save extensions.

-U, --upgrade
    Upgrade a package. This is essentially a "remove-then-install" process. Files with .conf extensions will be saved.

-Q, --query
    Query the package database. This operation allows you to view installed packages and their files. See QUERY OPTIONS below.

-V, --version
    Display version and exit.

-h, --help
    Display syntax for the given operation. If no operation was supplied, then the general syntax is shown.

QUERY OPTIONS

-o, --owns <file>
    Output the name of the package that owns <file>.

-l, --list
    Instead of outputting the package name, output the list of files owned by the package.

-i, --info
    Output the .PKGINFO file contained in <package>. This option can only be used with the -p option.

-p, --file
    Tells pacman that the package supplied on the command line is a file, not an entry in the database. Pacman will decompress the file and query it. This is useful with --info and --list.

OPTIONS

-v, --verbose
    Output more status and error messages.

-f, --force
    Force installation, overwriting conflicting files. If the package that is about to be installed contains files that are already installed this option will cause all those files to be overwritten. This option should be used with care, preferably not at all.

-n, --nosave
    Instructs pacman to ignore file backup designations. Normally, when a file is about to be removed from the system, the database is first checked to see if the file should be renamed to a .save extension (indicated by a '*' prefix in the pacman database). The --nosave will turn off all file backups.

-r, --root <path>
    Specify alternative installation root (default is "/"). This should not be used as a way to install software into e.g. /usr/local instead of /usr. Instead this should be used if you want to install a package on a temporary mounted partition, which is "owned" by another system. By using this option you not only specify where the software should be installed, but you also specify which package database to use.

AUTHOR
Judd Vinet <jvinet@zeroflux.org>