How do you log new optional dependencies for full system update?

qwertypoke · 2016-11-30 14:04:02

This has been discussed before. I did not find anything really beautiful.

I make system updates rather seldom. Almost every package gets updated when I finally do. This takes long and results in big amount of output on the screen. I just realised that the output for optional dependencies is not logged in /var/log/pacman.log. It took some searching in the forums to find out that I gtk3-print-backends is now required for printing. I had not seen the message mentioning the optional dependency for gtk3 as I do not usually like to stare at the terminal during the whole system update.

I guess everything gets captured and I can also see the output on the screen if I enter:

(pacman -Syu 2>&1) | tee pacman2.log

I wonder how others deal with these non-logged dependency messages?

Slithery · 2016-11-30 14:09:02

Update more often and pay attention to pacman's output.

ayekat · 2016-11-30 14:17:41

I agree that it would be nice to have that information logged, though.
If you're running pacman from a TTY, the scrollback buffer is rather limited, and often gets discarded when you change to a different TTY.
For things like .pacnew files, there is always `pacdiff` (or simply `find`), so losing that output isn't too tragic (but it's logged anyway).
For things like directory permissions changing, there is `pacman -Qkk` (although it's a little verbose - but it's logged anyway).

R00KIE · 2016-11-30 14:37:28

You could try to run pacman within script, see 'man script'.

Trilby · 2016-11-30 15:05:08

You can also list all the currently-not-installed opt deps of all of your packages (even with some formatting):

#!/bin/bash

pacman -Qi | awk -F: '
   function ltrim(s) { sub(/^[ \t\r\n]+/, "", s); return s; }
   /^Name/ { pkg=ltrim($2); }
   /^Optional Deps/ && $2 != " None" {
      n = 0;
      while (1) {
         if ($NF !~ /\[installed\]/) {
            if (++n == 1) printf "\033[34;1m%s\033[0m\n", pkg;
            printf "\t\033[1m%s:\033[0m %s\n", ltrim($(NF-1)), ltrim($NF);
         }
         getline;
         if ($1 ~ /^Required/) break;
      }
   }
'

EDIT: oops, the first version didn't quite work perfectly, this one should.

qwertypoke · 2016-12-01 07:54:45

Lots of useful information here that I will need sooner or later. Thank you.

smirky · 2016-12-01 08:42:05

This version prints a lot of misplaced strings all over the shell. Perhaps it's because I'm using zsh?

Trilby · 2016-12-01 12:10:46

Sorry about that. One of the escape codes for bold did get a stray tab inserted somehow. Fixed. I don't actually use this myself (though I might now in the future) - I just threw it together for this thread.

Depending on one's actual goals, you may want to add an 'e' to the pacman flags too in order to show not-installed opt-deps only for packages you've explicitly installed.

Arch Linux

#1 2016-11-30 14:04:02

How do you log new optional dependencies for full system update?

#2 2016-11-30 14:09:02

Re: How do you log new optional dependencies for full system update?

#3 2016-11-30 14:17:41

Re: How do you log new optional dependencies for full system update?

#4 2016-11-30 14:37:28

Re: How do you log new optional dependencies for full system update?

#5 2016-11-30 15:05:08

Re: How do you log new optional dependencies for full system update?

#6 2016-12-01 07:54:45

Re: How do you log new optional dependencies for full system update?

#7 2016-12-01 08:42:05

Re: How do you log new optional dependencies for full system update?

#8 2016-12-01 12:10:46

Re: How do you log new optional dependencies for full system update?

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