[solved] Which Pacman commands can be passed to makepkg

MoonSwan · 2014-07-22 20:34:18

Hi all! I'm a very big fan of Alan's work and his blog has kept me entertained for quite some time now. Regarding package management, specifically how to "try-before-you-buy" packages from AUR or ABS, he wrote:

One way I have found to keep track of packages you want to temporarily install is to have a sort of secondary
package management system within the main pacman database. This is achieved through abuse of the dependency
tracking features of pacman. Any package that is to be installed for a temporary period get installed with the --
asdep flag. This tells pacman that the package is a dependency. Given no other package depends on it, it is what is
commonly referred to as an "orphan" package and can be listed using pacman -Qtd. Currently on my system I have:
$ pacman -Qtd
gimp 2.6.11-6
vlc 1.1.10-6
When I no longer want these packages on my system, they will be uninstalled in the standard way (pacman -Rs pkg).
If I decide to keep the package, I can change the pacman database entry using the little known -D/--database flag.
E.g. pacman -D --asexplicit vlc will change the install reason for the vlc package from being "Installed as a
dependency for another package" to "Explicitly installed". It will no longer be listed as an orphan, effectively
taking it out of this secondary pacman management system inserting it into the main one.

I began to use this method of package management after I read this on his blog. It makes sense and it works well. However, I want to know if the only flags I can pass to Pacman while building apps are:

--asdeps
--noconfirm
--needed

The wiki, though, doesn't say anything about the useage of other pacman flags.

My question is: can I pass arbitrary flags to Pacman while building an app using a PKGBUILD? E.G. can I pass makepkg the "--asexplicit" flag if I want to do the opposite of Alan's idea and install something as an explicit package? Are apps compiled through "makepkg" installed and flagged by Pacman by default "--asexplicit?"

[edit]: Marked solved and gave a better subject line for future searchers.

Last edited by MoonSwan (2014-07-22 21:26:03)

Trilby · 2014-07-22 20:39:21

I think you really need to clarify your question. You can't pass pacman any flags while building 'apps' - pacman doesn't build packages, makepkg does.

If you want to know what flags you can pass to pacman when installing a package, read the man page.

The makepkg man page will also tell you which flags can be passed to pacman when using the -i flag.

MoonSwan · 2014-07-22 21:24:39

Oh, thanks Trilby! I guess I missed that in makepkg's man page. I'll mark this as solved. Thank you.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-07-22 20:34:18

[solved] Which Pacman commands can be passed to makepkg

#2 2014-07-22 20:39:21

Re: [solved] Which Pacman commands can be passed to makepkg

#3 2014-07-22 21:24:39

Re: [solved] Which Pacman commands can be passed to makepkg

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