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Do not update single packages on Archlinux, but
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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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You're correct partial upgrades are unsupported. Arch follows a rolling release model, meaning there are no fixed "versions" of the system. Instead, everything is continuously updated. Each package is built and tested against the current state of the rest of the system in the Arch repositories. That package was compiled against the latest system libraries in the repos, not necessarily the ones on your machine.
Your proposed "workaround" may work if the package is standalone and has few/no dependencies. Again, ArchLinux strongly recommends full system upgrades (pacman -Syu) rather than only reinstalling/upgrading a single package, because library or dependency mismatches can occur if your system is out of sync.
A safer approach may be to use "pacman -S package --needed" which will avoid removing it first and automatically handles dependencies safely.
But
pacman -S packageto install a new application is not considered a partial upgrade.