Variant packages (noob quetion)

dedhart · 2006-07-03 20:43:39

Hi I'm new to arch linux and was wondering if I could use pacman to install a different version of a given package. Can I pull packages from the unstable or testing branches? Is there a how to for this?

mcmillan · 2006-07-03 21:54:02

If you just enable the extra repositories anything in those would be available for when you update. These are just commented out in /etc/pacman.conf by default.

If you mean more like having multiple versions of a package installed at the same time, I'm don't think it's possible, and imagine it would probably be a bad idea even if it was possible.

dedhart · 2006-07-04 02:05:49

Ok I was using gentoo before moving to arch, and I know that to use a testing or unstable package in gentoo you'd just put the appropriate package name in either /etc/portage/package.keywords or /etc/portage/package.unmask and you can mask stable packages with /etc.portage/package.mask to keep an erlier package. So everything in arch is pretty much handled with /etc/pacman.conf then? Is there some documentation that can help me configure this file??

mcmillan · 2006-07-04 02:29:11

There's a some information at the wiki, though specific to editing pacman.conf seems a bit lacking right now, but I thought the man page for pacman is pretty good actually.

Without having used gentoo, it seems like /etc.portage/package.mask is similar to listing a package with IgnorePkg. I'm not quite clear on the other two files you mention.

It kind of sounds like portage lets you install packages of different stability individually. Pacman is more like apt-get from debian I'd say. In pacman.conf there's several different repositories listed. When you do pacman -Sy, it downloads the most recent list of packages from the available repositories. Doing pacman -Syu will download the list, and upgrade any installed packages to the latest version.

elasticdog · 2006-07-04 03:22:58

If I'm not mistaken, I think you can specify the repo you want to grab the package from by just prefixing the package name and then adding a forward slash:

# pacman -S testing/vim

...if that's what you meant?!?

Snowman · 2006-07-04 04:48:31

Pacman will always install the lateset versions but it's possible to have several versions of a package. For that, you'll need to make your own custom packages with makepkg. Give them another name than the official packages and install the files in another location otherwise you'll have file conflicts.

If you want to use an unstable package and its stable counterpart, you'll need to use a custom packages.

As for the testing repo, if you put the testing repo entry before the other repo entries in pacman.conf, you'll be using the testing packages. If you only want to use selected packages from testing, put it after the other repo entries in pacman.conf and install packages as elasticdog said. However, be careful as some packages in testing might need other packages in testing to work.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-07-03 20:43:39

Variant packages (noob quetion)

#2 2006-07-03 21:54:02

Re: Variant packages (noob quetion)

#3 2006-07-04 02:05:49

Re: Variant packages (noob quetion)

#4 2006-07-04 02:29:11

Re: Variant packages (noob quetion)

#5 2006-07-04 03:22:58

Re: Variant packages (noob quetion)

#6 2006-07-04 04:48:31

Re: Variant packages (noob quetion)

Board footer