Arch Linux

Xaoret

Member

Registered: 2020-09-30

Posts: 7

Pacman vs Yay?

Hello, I have a question, is it the same to update the system with Pacman -Syyu as with Yay -Syyu? Are there risks of something breaking by updating with one or the other? Thank you

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,460

Website

Re: Pacman vs Yay?

First, neither of those is the proper command to upgrade your system.  Using both "yay" and "-Syyu" suggests that you have been following some horrible third party guide or youtube video.  Follow the wiki.

Also given the question as it is asked, I'd say it would be a very bad idea for you to use yay at all.  It most likely will result in breaking things.

However, strictly speaking with the command provided yay should just pass those arguments to pacman - so there should be no difference.  But why bother?  Just use pacman directly and you can know it will run properly.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,731

Website

Re: Pacman vs Yay?

Agreed, AUR helpers cause more problems than they are worth.

---

AUR packages • Zsh and other configs

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,599

Website

Re: Pacman vs Yay?

To be more specific: what Trilby refers to with `-Syyu`, is your use of it instead of `-Syu`.

Double `-yy` is meant to fix a rare, particular type of corruption or while downgrading entire system from ALA. It plays absolutely no role in daily pacman usage and causes pointless load on resources donated to the Arch community by volunteers.

Following Arch Wiki is strongly adviced. Arch is moving at fast pace and other sources are often outdated (even AW itself happens to be). Without already knowing the topic well it is hard to judge source’s trustworthness too. And majority of them is made either by newbies or dishonest authors.

If one uses larger number of AUR items or items with huge in-AUR dependency tree, an AUR helper may become useful to automate the tedious process. To automate the process, the process must already be in place and well understood by the user. And in such case aurutils is often the answer, not yay. The primary problem AUR helpers cause is that they make beginners never get really accustomed to the process, followed by producing a wrong perception of what is really happening. That bites later.

Last edited by mpan (2024-02-03 18:37:59)

---

Paperclips in avatars? | Sometimes I seem a bit harsh — don’t get offended too easily!