How do non explicitly installed package dependencies get updated in Arch? Do they update independently of the package that is dependent on them, or do they get updated when the parent package updates? Or is it some secret third thing?
Are you talking about package dependencies that were pulled in after compiling a package from AUR ?
As far as I know (I'm not much of an AUR user, except when I quickly want to test some software. Please correct me if I'm wrong) if you normally would run sudo pacman -Syu you can instead of that run sudo yay -Syu (or other AUR helpers that support this) which would update both Arch packages and these from AUR.
Are you talking about package dependencies that were pulled in after compiling a package from AUR ? As far as I know (I'm not much of an AUR user, except when I quickly want to test some software. Please correct me if I'm wrong) if you normally would run
sudo pacman -Syu
you can instead of that runsudo yay -Syu
(or other AUR helpers that support this) which would update both Arch packages and these from AUR.