Arch Linux

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Is there a way to find out what each file in core does?

I would like to know if there is a way to know what the packages in [core] does (i.e., even during install)? If I re-install, I only want to install the packages that I need. There are some packages that I understand from experience, such as Wifi for wireless and some from experience from other Linux distros as well, but there are other particulars I don't know about. TIA

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Is there a way to find out what each file in core does?

Read the man pages and websites of the relevant applications.

Dusty

Schwag Merchant

From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2004-01-18

Posts: 5,986

Website

Re: Is there a way to find out what each file in core does?

run pacman -Qi pkgname for each package you want to learn about. The Description at the bottom should give you enough information for your purposes. You can also see if its required by anything else that's installed.

You could, of course, write a script that does this for all files in [core], snips out the descriptions, and cats them to a file.

Dusty

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tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Is there a way to find out what each file in core does?

Hmmm... I was assuming you had already seem our package description, and wanted more details.