Arch Linux

Padfoot

Member

Registered: 2010-09-03

Posts: 381

Re: Is there a way to "clean up" my package system?

No need to call it recursively.

Then you may have more unused packages left (the dependencies of the packages you removed) and you need to run 'pacman -Qdt' again etc.

From the man page -R options

       -s, --recursive
           Remove each target specified including all of their
           dependencies, provided that (A) they are not required
           by other packages; and (B) they were not explicitly
           installed by the user. This operation is recursive and
           analogous to a backwards --sync operation, and helps
           keep a clean system without orphans. If you want to
           omit condition (B), pass this option twice.

So pacman -Rs will clean up all orphans. No need to call recursively.
I would not recommend pacman -Rss as you may remove alot more than you bargained for (same with pacman -Rc).

Cheers.

Last edited by Padfoot (2012-04-18 06:40:07)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Is there a way to "clean up" my package system?

So pacman -Rs will clean up all orphans. No need to call recursively.

Umm, that's what I meant: use 'pacman -Rs' / 'pacman -Rns' instead of just 'pacman -R'.
What did you mean by "No need to call it recursively."? You do need to feed pacman a list of targets.

meph

Member

Registered: 2011-06-06

Posts: 160

Re: Is there a way to "clean up" my package system?

So pacman -Rs will clean up all orphans. No need to call recursively.

Umm, that's what I meant: use 'pacman -Rs' / 'pacman -Rns' instead of just 'pacman -R'.
What did you mean by "No need to call it recursively."? You do need to feed pacman a list of targets.

Don't mean to interfere, but this seems to be just a misunderstanding about what 'recursive' means in this context. Point is that unlike in the original pacman -R $(pacman -Qqdt) command, which was first suggested in this thread, you don't need to run it repeatedly to get every single orphaned package removed, the -s switch does that for you. Recursively.

---

Running arch is like raising a puppy - if you spend a bit of time with it each day and do just a bit of training you'll end up with the most loyal partner you could want; if you lock it in a room and don't check on if for several days, it'll tear apart your stuff and poop everywhere.

Padfoot

Member

Registered: 2010-09-03

Posts: 381

Re: Is there a way to "clean up" my package system?

Yeah, just a misunderstanding. From the above posts I understood others were calling the pacman -Rs command multiple times when there is no need.

Cheers.