pacman(8)

NAME
pacman - package manager utility

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

DESCRIPTION
pacman is a package management utility that tracks installed packages on a linux system. It has simple dependency support and the ability to connect to a remote ftp server and automatically upgrade packages on the local system. pacman package are 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.

-F, --freshen
    This is like --upgrade except that, unlike --upgrade, this will only upgrade packages that are already installed on your system.

-Q, --query
    Query the package database. This operation allows you to view installed packages and their files, as well as meta-info about individual packages (dependencies, conflicts, install date, build date, size). This can be run against the local package database or can be used on individual .tar.gz packages. See QUERY OPTIONS below.

-R, --remove
    Remove a package from the system. Files belonging to the specified package will be deleted, and the database will be updated. Most configuration files will be saved with a .pacsave extension unless the --nosave option was used.

-S, --sync
    Synchronize packages. With this function you can install packages directly from the ftp servers, complete with all dependencies required to run the packages. For example, pacman -S qt will download qt and all the packages it depends on and install them. You could also use pacman -Su to upgrade all packages that are out of date (see below).

-U, --upgrade
    Upgrade a package. This is essentially a "remove-then-add" process. See HANDLING CONFIG FILES for an explanation on how pacman takes care of config files.

-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.

OPTIONS

-d, --nodeps
    Skips all dependency checks. Normally, pacman will always check a package's dependency fields to ensure that all dependencies are installed and there are no package conflicts in the system. This switch disables these checks.

-f, --force
    Bypass file conflict checks, 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, ideally not at all.

-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.

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

--config <path>
    Specify an alternate configuration file.

--noconfirm
    Bypass any and all "Are you sure?" messages. It's not a good idea to do this unless you want to run pacman from a script.

SYNC OPTIONS

-c, --clean
    Remove old packages from the cache. When pacman downloads packages, it saves them in /var/cache/pacman/pkg. If you need to free up diskspace, you can remove these packages by using the --clean option. Using one --clean (or -c) switch will only remove old packages. Use it twice to remove all packages from the cache.

-g, --groups
    Display all the members for each package group specified. If no group names are provided, all groups will be listed.

-i, --info
    Display dependency information for a given package. This will search through all repositories for a matching package and display the dependencies, conflicts, etc.

-l, --list
    List all files in the specified repositories. Multiple repositories can be specified on the command line.

-p, --print-uris
    Print out URIs for each package that will be installed, including any dependencies that have yet to be installed. These can be piped to a file and downloaded at a later time, using a program like wget.

-s, --search <regexp>
    This will search each package in the package list for names or descriptions that matches <regexp>.

-u, --sysupgrade
    Upgrades all packages that are out of date. pacman will examine every package installed on the system, and if a newer package exists on the server it will upgrade. pacman will present a report of all packages it wants to upgrade and will not proceed without user confirmation. Dependencies are automatically resolved at this level and will be installed/upgraded if necessary.

-w, --downloadonly
    Retrieve all packages from the server, but do not install/upgrade anything.

-y, --refresh
    Download a fresh copy of the master package list from the ftp server defined in /etc/pacman.conf. This should typically be used each time you use --sysupgrade.

--ignore <pkg>
    This option functions exactly the same as the IgnorePkg configuration directive. Sometimes it can be handy to skip some package updates without having to edit pacman.conf each time.

REMOVE OPTIONS

-c, --cascade
    Remove all target packages, as well as all packages that depend on one or more target packages. This operation is recursive.

-k, --keep
    Removes the database entry only. Leaves all files in place.

-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 .pacsave extension. If --nosave is used, these designations are ignored and the files are removed.

-s, --recursive
    For each target specified, remove it and all its dependencies, provided that (A) they are not required by other packages; and (B) they were not explicitly installed by the user. This option is analagous to a backwards --sync operation.

QUERY OPTIONS

-e, --orphans
    List all packages that were explicitly installed (ie, not pulled in as a dependency by other packages) and are not required by any other packages.

-g, --groups
    Display all groups that a specified package is part of. If no package names are provided, all groups and members will be listed.

-i, --info
    Display information on a given package. If it is used with the -p option then the .PKGINFO file will be printed.

-l, --list
    List all files owned by <package>. Multiple packages can be specified on the command line.

-o, --owns <file>
    Search for the package that owns <file>.

-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.

-s, --search <regexp>
    This will search each locally-installed package for names or descriptions that matches <regexp>.

HANDLING CONFIG FILES
pacman uses the same logic as rpm to determine action against files that are designated to be backed up. During an upgrade, it uses 3 md5 hashes for each backup file to determine the required action: one for the original file installed, one for the new file that's about to be installed, and one for the actual file existing on the filesystem. After comparing these 3 hashes, the follow scenarios can result:

original=X, current=X, new=X
    All three files are the same, so we win either way. Install the new file.

original=X, current=X, new=Y
    The current file is un-altered from the original but the new one is different. Since the user did not ever modify the file, and the new one may contain improvements/bugfixes, we install the new file.

original=X, current=Y, new=X
    Both package versions contain the exact same file, but the one on the filesystem has been modified since. In this case, we leave the current file in place.

original=X, current=Y, new=Y
    The new one is identical to the current one. Win win. Install the new file.

original=X, current=Y, new=Z
    All three files are different. So we install the new file, but back up the old one to a .pacsave extension. This way the user can move the old configuration file back into place if he wishes.

CONFIGURATION
pacman will attempt to read /etc/pacman.conf each time it is invoked. This configuration file is divided into sections or repositories. Each section defines a package repository that pacman can use when searching for packages in --sync mode. The exception to this is the options section, which defines global options.

Example:
    [options]
        NoUpgrade = etc/passwd etc/group etc/shadow
        NoUpgrade = etc/fstab
        Include = /etc/pacman.d/current
        [custom]
        Server = file:///home/pkgs

CONFIG: OPTIONS

DBPath = path/to/db/dir
    Overrides the default location of the toplevel database directory. The default is var/lib/pacman.

HoldPkg = <package> [package] ...
    If a user tries to --remove a package that's listed in HoldPkg, pacman will ask for confirmation before proceeding.

IgnorePkg = <package> [package] ...
    Instructs pacman to ignore any upgrades for this package when performing a --sysupgrade.

Include = <path>
    Include another config file. This config file can include repositories or general configuration options.

ProxyServer = <host|ip>[:port]
    If set, pacman will use this proxy server for all ftp/http transfers.

XferCommand = /path/to/command %u
    If set, pacman will use this external program to download all remote files. All instances of %u will be replaced with the URL to be downloaded. If present, instances of %o will be replaced with the local filename, plus a ".part" extension, which allows programs like wget to do file resumes properly. This option is useful for users who experience problems with pacman's built-in http/ftp support, or need the more advanced proxy support that comes with utilities like wget.

NoPassiveFtp
    Disables passive ftp connections when downloading packages. (aka Active Mode)

NoUpgrade = <file> [file] ...
    All files listed with a NoUpgrade directive will never be touched during a package install/upgrade. Note: do not include the leading slash when specifying files.

NoExtract = <file> [file] ...
    All files listed with a NoExtract directive will never be extracted from a package into the filesystem. This can be useful when you don't want part of a package to be installed. For example, if your httpd root uses an index.php, then you would not want the index.html file to be extracted from the apache package.

UseSyslog
    Log action messages through syslog(). This will insert pacman log entries into your /var/log/messages or equivalent.

LogFile = /path/to/file
    Log actions directly to a file, usually /var/log/pacman.log.

CONFIG: REPOSITORIES
Each repository section defines a section name and at least one location where the packages can be found. The section name is defined by the string within square brackets (eg, the two above are 'current' and 'custom'). Locations are defined with the Server directive and follow a URL naming structure. Currently only ftp is supported for remote servers. If you want to use a local directory, you can specify the full path with a 'file://' prefix, as shown above.

USING YOUR OWN REPOSITORY
Let's say you have a bunch of custom packages in /home/pkgs and their respective PKGBUILD files are all in /var/abs/local. All you need to do is generate a compressed package database in the /home/pkgs directory so pacman can find it when run with --refresh.
    # gensync /var/abs/local /home/pkgs/custom.db.tar.gz
The above command will read all PKGBUILD files in /var/abs/local and generate a compressed database called /home/pkgs/custom.db.tar.gz. Note that the database must be of the form {treename}.db.tar.gz, where {treename} is the name of the section defined in the configuration file. That's it! Now configure your custom section in the configuration file as shown in the config example above. Pacman will now use your package repository. If you add new packages to the repository, remember to re-generate the database and use pacman's --refresh option.

SEE ALSO
makepkg is the package-building tool that comes with pacman.

AUTHOR
Judd Vinet <jvinet@zeroflux.org>