Arch Linux

bivan

Member

Registered: 2026-02-03

Posts: 23

Why not pacman & pacstrap -S ... -U ... ?

E.g.

[a@archiso ~]$ sudo pacman -Syu zaz -U /run/media/a/1b0cfe57-4f05-4100-835d-f90559411e31/\!/Arch_Linux_KDE/.tar
error: only one operation may be used at a time

[a@archiso ~]$ sudo pacstrap -icMK /run/media/a/9f0a973e-1b55-4c1b-a423-6c14c03cf9b7 base linux -U /run/media/a/1b0cfe57-4f05-4100-835d-f90559411e31/\!/Arch_Linux_KDE/.tar
...
error: only one operation may be used at a time

why not? It would be nice.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 18,884

Re: Why not pacman & pacstrap -S ... -U ... ?

pacman can not directly handle .tar files only packages. What are those commands intended to achieve?

bivan

Member

Registered: 2026-02-03

Posts: 23

Re: Why not pacman & pacstrap -S ... -U ... ?

The .tar is a modified yabridge package, uncompressed, so the goal is the efficiency (because yes we can do it in 2 times: pacman -S ... then pacman -U ... ).

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 18,884

Re: Why not pacman & pacstrap -S ... -U ... ?

To do it in one step you would need to create a local repository containing the modified package so it can be handled as a single Sync transaction. I believe it is a current limitation that `pacman` can not handle local packages and repositories in the same transaction.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 15,041

Re: Why not pacman & pacstrap -S ... -U ... ?

It's a limatation that I hope stays, as the line between packages from repos and 'foreign' packages is blurred too often already.

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seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,664

Re: Why not pacman & pacstrap -S ... -U ... ?

You'd essentially look for kinda scripting pacman where

pacman -Rs firefox -Syu vivaldi -U sometarball.tar

would be equivalent to

pacman -Rs firefox && pacman -Syu vivaldi && pacman -U sometarball.tar

The only (somewhat) plausible reason for that would probably be privilege escalation management (sudo timeout)
The in-code obstacle is likely that pacman doesn't sequence the parameters at all (which is why pacman -Suy condemns you to eternal hell, but will still succeed) and the main reason to *not* do that is the "&&" - how should failure of any sequence be handled? Immediate abort? What's the return code?) but I don't think it would blur the lines beyond what's possible right now or to the degree of an AUR helper (which would hide the "-U" behind a single "-S")

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mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,597

Website

Re: Why not pacman & pacstrap -S ... -U ... ?

While not absolutely true, it’s an almost universal convention that command-line utilities may take switches in arbitrary order. The exceptions are rare. These which didn’t carry it over from ancient history are even rarer. Some famous exceptions are ffmpeg and gcc.

So aside from what Seth said about defining a corresponding, reliable, and clear logic: pacman just follows what CLI users expect from command-line utilities.

Last edited by mpan (Yesterday 13:25:13)

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