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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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But I'm not doing
pacman -Sy package. That is not what I am talking about. I am only talking aboutpacman -S package, which is not updating the system partially. IF the package depends on something else to update, then the system would need to be updated. But that is not what I was asking, because I only talk about the package with-S package. I just chosefirefoxas an example, it could have been any other package.To make it clear, when I say
-S firefox, then I mean really that without updating a dependency like libssl. The idea is to install only new packages without updating anything on the system. I guess as you say it depends on the dependencies of the package, if this is feasible.But that is my point. Just running
pacman -S firefoxis fine as long as you didn't runpacman -Syat some point earlier. It won't update anything, even dependencies. It will just install the version that matches your current package list and system including the right version of any dependencies if they aren't already installed.But that means if you already have Firefox installed it will do nothing.
We can install a new package if it wasn't installed with
pacman -S firefox. That is not a partial upgrade of the system. Right? What i don't understand is, when I uninstall withpacman -Rs firefox, delete the cached firefox package (only that file), then the system is in the same state as before I installed it. Then-S firefoxshould be okay, right? And it even looks up the new version. This is my question, if that would work correctly.IF no dependency tries to update too. Off course in that case I would stop. Without
pacman -Sy, I never do that anyway, only-Syu.That's all you need to know. As long as you always use
pacman -Syuyou will be fine.pacman -Syis 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-yall 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.