Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

jernst · 2024-05-04 20:31:36

Looking for a good way to script the answer to the pacman question:

:: newpackage and oldpackage are in conflict. Remove oldpackage? [y/N]

Experimented with the "--print-format" option to determine what package might need to be removed but a lot of the format strings don't do anything for me, e.g. "%H" does not get resolved. And due to dependencies, the install and uninstall operations should really be part of the same transaction.

What I'm really trying to do is, from a script, to obsolete an already-installed package oldpackage with a new package newpackage. So I made newpackage "conflicts" with oldpackage and "provides" oldpackage and "replaces" oldpackage. Which leads to that question when trying to install newpackage. --noconfirm doesn't seem to apply there.

Last edited by jernst (2024-05-05 03:24:32)

V1del · 2024-05-04 21:01:29

There is no automated and surefire way to do this which is why the option is prompted in the first place.

FWIW if the default choice is N in this case then your conflicts and replaces are set incorrectly, as a properly set up directive would make Y the default choice. Can you get actually clarity about what exact package you are wanting to do this with?

jernst · 2024-05-04 21:43:20

My own packages.

newpackage's PKGBUILD has:

provides=(
    'oldpackage'
)
conflicts=(
    'oldpackage'
)
replaces=(
    'oldpackage'
)

Is that wrong? If I could get the default to be Y, then --noconfirm would probably solve my problem.

Trilby · 2024-05-04 22:12:01

Why not just do two steps:

pacman -Rdd oldpackage
pacman -S newpackage

jernst · 2024-05-04 22:32:36

V1del: Looking at the source, I'm not seeing a code path in which the question could be Y/n instead of y/N. (But I'm not familiar with the code base so I may well be wrong.)

Trilby: This would probably work, if I could determine the name of oldpackage somehow. Which is why I tried the --print-format %H (see original post) hoping it would tell me the name of the conflicting package, but %H didn't get replaced.

Allan · 2024-05-04 22:54:05

pacutils is designed for handling scripting use cases.

jernst · 2024-05-04 23:11:42

Will investigate that. Ty.

Trilby · 2024-05-05 02:10:20

jernst wrote:

So I made newpackage "conflicts" with oldpackage and "provides" oldpackage and "replaces" oldpackage.

So how can you not know the name of oldpackage?

jernst · 2024-05-05 03:24:03

It's because it's not about a single package, but a scheme to be applied to several package families. Also the reason I need to script.
Seems I need to investigate pacutils as the better tool for the job.

I'm marking this as resolved.

seth · 2024-05-05 06:59:31

Thing is that it's rather odd that you're not defaulting to "Y" and that oddity cannot be explained by some generic "I do about this and get about that" - maybe you need a versioned directive or whatever.

Also: do you default to "N" all the time (even w/ package replacements in the repos) or just w/ your own ones?

Trilby · 2024-05-05 12:50:29

jernst wrote:

It's because it's not about a single package, but a scheme to be applied to several package families.

The number doesn't matter. If each package's replacement lists the original package as a conflict/replace then you clearly have the (list of) name(s) of the package(s) to be replaced. Making this statement plural has no impact on it's veracity.

jernst · 2024-05-05 19:57:56

I'm not sure I can do this easily in a pacman -Syu scenario. But I haven't tried yet :-)

Arch Linux

#1 2024-05-04 20:31:36

Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#2 2024-05-04 21:01:29

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#3 2024-05-04 21:43:20

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#4 2024-05-04 22:12:01

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#5 2024-05-04 22:32:36

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#6 2024-05-04 22:54:05

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#7 2024-05-04 23:11:42

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#8 2024-05-05 02:10:20

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#9 2024-05-05 03:24:03

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#10 2024-05-05 06:59:31

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#11 2024-05-05 12:50:29

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

#12 2024-05-05 19:57:56

Re: Solved: Script pacman conflict resolution

Board footer