Arch Linux

swedish

Member

Registered: 2015-07-09

Posts: 5

[solved] Mark package as explicitly installed without re-installing

I've recently found out that running pacman -Qdt to find unneeded packages is a good thing to do. However, for me it lists a number of packages that are strictly not dependencies but are still packages I want. Examples include xorg-server, vte, ctemplate and there are more. Is there a way to make these packages as explicitly installed that isn't just reinstalling them with pacman -S <package>? I did find https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=84286 from 9 years ago, and was hoping that there might be some option to pacman, but I've read the manpage a few times and cannot find anything that marks as explicit but also does not perform the reinstall. For those who use Gentoo as well, I'm looking for the equivalent to --noreplace from emerge/portage.

Last edited by swedish (2018-06-13 09:37:58)

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: [solved] Mark package as explicitly installed without re-installing

pacman -S --asexplicit --dbonly <package>

swedish

Member

Registered: 2015-07-09

Posts: 5

Re: [solved] Mark package as explicitly installed without re-installing

Ooh thanks. I wasn't looking for the term db or database, just for terms like explicit or implicit, which is why I missed it.

hoerbert

Member

Registered: 2013-04-03

Posts: 87

Re: [solved] Mark package as explicitly installed without re-installing

Shouldn't

pacman -D --asexplicit <package_name>

do the same thing?

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: [solved] Mark package as explicitly installed without re-installing

Yes.
Actually that's probably better solution, since it's faster and doesn't require the package files, so you also save the time and disk space otherwise spent on downloading packages you've purged from package cache.

Last edited by ooo (2018-06-13 10:44:02)