Arch Linux

charper_flow

Member

Registered: 2022-07-15

Posts: 34

Does pacman leave sourcefiles anywhere?

For example if I run pacman -S dmenu it installs it just fine. I know that the binaries can be found in /bin/ , but I can't find any trace of it stored elsewhere. Does pacman store the source files anywhere locally or does it download sourcefiles, build, and then cleanup? If I wanted to use some patches to modify my dmenu would I have to uninstall dmenu, then download source and modify the MKPKG there? I just want to make sure I have the general concepts correct in my head. Not looking for step by step instructions or anything.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,671

Re: Does pacman leave sourcefiles anywhere?

Pacman does not build packages, it manages their installation.   Packages are built using the ABS https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Build_System.  For things in our repositories, our developers and trusted users build those packages for you.  They  are signed cryptographically to ensure their integrity.

Things in the AUR https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository are not prebuilt -- The AUR contains the files needed to drive the ABS.  After AUR packages are built by you, they are installed by Pacman.

Last edited by ewaller (2022-07-17 20:13:11)

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teckk

Member

Registered: 2013-02-21

Posts: 588

Re: Does pacman leave sourcefiles anywhere?

You can get the source manually if you want to.

https://archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/dmenu/
https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-c … k/PKGBUILD

https://dl.suckless.org/tools/dmenu-5.1.tar.gz

charper_flow

Member

Registered: 2022-07-15

Posts: 34

Re: Does pacman leave sourcefiles anywhere?

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for helping me wrap my head around how this all works. Did a lot more reading on pacman and makepkg and am starting to understand how this all fits together

HiImTye

Member

From: Halifax, NS, Canada

Registered: 2012-05-09

Posts: 1,072

Re: Does pacman leave sourcefiles anywhere?

packages you download are stored in whatever folder you have specified in your pacman.conf under "CacheDir" (default /var/cache/pacman/pkg). if you have limited disk space it might be a good idea to prune these from time to time (i.e. sudo paccache -r)