Arch Linux

j_onland

Member

Registered: 2021-11-25

Posts: 4

'pacman -Qet' lists a lot of packages unknown to me

Hi,

As per subject: 'pacman -Qet' lists a lot of packages unknown to me. Are some of these packages installed in order to compile other packages and is it always safe to delete these?
I know they are marked as 'unrequired by any packages', but I'm breaking a sweat thinking of deleting everything in this list I don't personally use.

Thanks in advance.

James

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 18,991

Re: 'pacman -Qet' lists a lot of packages unknown to me

Packages can link to additional libraries through auto-detection at build time.  If remaining packages stop working you will need to rebuild them.

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,629

Website

Re: 'pacman -Qet' lists a lot of packages unknown to me

You might have inadvertently installed them as a part of a package group.

Another possibility is a leftover from a build process, where you used pacman -S to install dependencies (without --asdeps) instead of passing the -sr options to makepkg.

Sometimes optional dependencies, if installed as explicit, will remain cluttering system after a dependent package no longer refers to them or is uninstalled.

In any case, grepping through your pacman log⁽¹⁾ and your shell’s history⁽²⁾ should give a hint on how they ended up installed in your system.
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⁽¹⁾ The LogFile entry in “/etc/pacman.conf”, or “/var/log/pacman.log” if the default is used.
⁽²⁾ For example “~/.bash_history” in bash or whatever is set by the HISTFILE environment variable.

Last edited by mpan (2021-11-26 05:48:09)

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j_onland

Member

Registered: 2021-11-25

Posts: 4

Re: 'pacman -Qet' lists a lot of packages unknown to me

Thanks a lot. That will definitely help!