Arch Linux

tranquility

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2004-08-06

Posts: 136

Strange pacman behaviour

When performing a

pacman -Ss

I get:

usage:  pacman {-S --sync} [options] [package]
options:
  -c, --clean         remove old packages from cache directory (use -cc for all)
  -d, --nodeps        skip dependency checks
  -f, --force         force install, overwrite conflicting files
  -g, --groups        view all members of a package group
  -i, --info          view package information
  -l, --list          list all packages belonging to the specified repository
  -p, --print-uris    print out download URIs for each package to be installed
  -s, --search        search remote repositories for matching regexps
  -u, --sysupgrade    upgrade all packages that are out of date
  -w, --downloadonly  download packages but do not install/upgrade anything
  -y, --refresh       download fresh package databases from the server
      --ignore <pkg>  ignore a package upgrade (can be used more than once)
      --config <path> set an alternate configuration file
      --noconfirm     do not ask for any confirmation
  -v, --verbose       be verbose
  -r, --root <path>   set an alternate installation root
  -b, --dbpath <path> set an alternate database location
current/abiword 2.2.9-1
    A fully-featured word processor
current/acpi 0.09-1
    Linux ACPI Client
current/acpid 1.0.4-1
    Utilities for using ACPI power management
current/acroread 7.0.0-1
    Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing PDF files
current/alsa-driver 1.0.9b-2
    An alternative implementation of Linux sound support
current/alsa-lib 1.0.9-1
[...]

Isn't this strange?? I'm developing a pacman front end and was using the -Ss option. Should I file a bug report or this is intentional?

Meanwhile I found out that

pacman -Ss ""

works as expected providing a list of packages. Maybe this was done to match

pacman -Qs ""

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: Strange pacman behaviour

The s option is to search for a string so you need to provide a string. That's why pacman -Ss fails.

Hmmm, I just tried it. Sometime it works, sometime it doesn't. :?

pacman -Ss "" works because you provide it an empty string so it list all packages in all repo.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Strange pacman behaviour

When I pacman -Ss with no search string it dumps everything from every repo. I don't even have to use "" in my command line.

Wait... I just pass the output through less and it seems to print the usage banner and then dump the repo list. Strange :?