Arch Linux

isolier

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 24

pacman Bloat?

Does packman auto delete the packages it downloads after it installs them or do I need to find and delete these myself?

peart

Member

From: Kanuckistan

Registered: 2003-07-28

Posts: 510

Re: pacman Bloat?

They stay in /var/cache/pacman/pkg.  You can clean your cache with "pacman -Scc"

isolier

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 24

Re: pacman Bloat?

Ah, thanks man...

jacko

Member

Registered: 2007-11-23

Posts: 840

Re: pacman Bloat?

man pacman

SYNC OPTIONS
       -c, --clean
           Remove old packages from the cache as well as unused sync databases
           to free up disk space. When pacman downloads packages, it saves
           them in a cache directory. In addition, databases are saved for
           every sync DB you download from, and are not deleted even if they
           are removed from the configuration file pacman.conf(5). Use one
           --clean switch to only remove old packages; use two to remove all
           packages from the cache. In both cases, you will have a yes or no
           option to remove packages and/or unused downloaded databases.

-Sc clean old packages
-Scc clean all packages

Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: pacman Bloat?

You may want to think twice about clearing cache; you lose the ability to easily downgrade packages without a cache.

---

Amiga 1000 restomod
IBM PCjr restomod
C=64 restodmod
Sauengard

isolier

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 24

Re: pacman Bloat?

Ok, so are you saying if I clean the cache, I will lose the ability to "pacman -Rs packagename" for packages I want to uninstall?  If that is the case it would be a bit of a bummer because it seems like a waste to have hundreds of megs worth of tarballs just lying around...  Thanks for your time.

mcmillan

Member

Registered: 2006-04-06

Posts: 737

Re: pacman Bloat?

When Misfit138 said downgrade he didn't mean remove packages, he meant install an older version of the package. For example I've had some problems with the newer kernels on my laptop, but older ones work better. If I had done an pacman -Sc while I still had the newer kernel it would have been harder to track down the older packages in order to switch back to a working kernel. Instead I can just install it from the package in my cache.

I'll clean the cache when I know my newest packages are working, and only use -Sc not -Scc. This way I can still get rid of older unneeded packages,  but I still know I have a local source of working packages if I need to reinstall them.

isolier

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 24

Re: pacman Bloat?

Ok, thanks makes sense, thanks for the info guys.