Arch Linux

skoal

Member

From: Frequent Flyer Underworld

Registered: 2004-03-23

Posts: 612

Website

Upgrading from testing or unstable repo's...

The other day I was upgrading "firefox" from 0.93 to 1.0PR.  However, pacman kept saying I was up to date and would only return the 0.93 pkg (from "extra" repo) for me.

I do have "testing" repo listed in 'pacman.conf', but after the extra directory.  So, I re-ordered "testing" above "extra" directory and it recognized the update to "1.0PR".

Question:

1. I used "pacman -Sy mozilla-firefox" to update.  What's the best way (as far as command line options go) to update stuff from "testing" repo?

2. Do I always have to make that manual re-ordering of repos when I want something from "testing"?

3. Why should I have to re-order my repo priority if a package from "extra" is named "foo-0.9.3.pkg.tar.gz" and from "testing" I have that same (newer) package called "foo-1.0.pkg.tar.gz"?  Am I missing something here...I honestly don't know much about pacman but assumed that it knows when to update by pkg-version numbers.

apeiro

Daddy

From: Victoria, BC, Canada

Registered: 2002-08-12

Posts: 771

Website

Re: Upgrading from testing or unstable repo's...

1. I used "pacman -Sy mozilla-firefox" to update.  What's the best way (as far as command line options go) to update stuff from "testing" repo?

When Testing is active and above Current and Extra in pacman.conf, you can just run a pacman -Syu and it will pull the newer packages from testing.

2. Do I always have to make that manual re-ordering of repos when I want something from "testing"?

Yup.  Order matters in your pacman.conf.  When pacman scans for a package, it stops once it finds a match, unless you specify the repository explicitly.  Example: pacman -S testing/mozilla-firefox

So if you want to use -Syu to get all testing packages, then you'll need to have [testing] above [current] and [extra].

3. Why should I have to re-order my repo priority if a package from "extra" is named "foo-0.9.3.pkg.tar.gz" and from "testing" I have that same (newer) package called "foo-1.0.pkg.tar.gz"?  Am I missing something here...I honestly don't know much about pacman but assumed that it knows when to update by pkg-version numbers.

It's mostly a performance thing, but the current method adds more flexibility.  This way, if you so wanted, you could leave [testing] at the bottom and only use it for certain packages, using Current for most everything else.  If pacman always did a full scan for a requested package, you would have to comment out [testing] whenever you wanted to -Syu.

And let's be honest... you have to explicitly enable Testing anyway, so it's not that hard to put it above [current] instead of at the bottom of pacman.conf.  A minor trade-off for the flexibility. 

paranoos

Member

From: thornhill.on.ca

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 442

Re: Upgrading from testing or unstable repo's...

Yep. I like leaving testing at the bottom, and just doing pacman -S testing/pkgname when I want something specific.

skoal

Member

From: Frequent Flyer Underworld

Registered: 2004-03-23

Posts: 612

Website

Re: Upgrading from testing or unstable repo's...

sweet.  I didn't know you could explicitly tell pacman at the command line to use a specific repo.  I must have missed that in the man page section.  That'll work.

thx.