Pacman

Pacman is the package manager used by the Arch Linux distribution. It tracks all the software installed in the system and can automatically install, uninstall, upgrade or downgrade packages using a remote central repository or local .pkg.tar.xz files.

Usage

Pacman is very simple to use. It should be noted, however, that all examples found in this page are to be run as root.

Installing

To install a package or a group of packages, simply supply its name as argument to the -S option:

pacman -S <package or group>

Uninstalling

To uninstall a package or group of packages, simply pass its name as argument to the -R option:

pacman -R <package or group>

System upgrade

To upgrade the whole system, issue the following command:

pacman -Syu

Partial upgrades are not supported in Arch Linux. Always upgrade the whole system at once and bring it to the latest version, otherwise incompatibilities could occur.

Package databases

You can query the package database of the remote repositories or the local database of installed packages using the -S or the -Q options respectively. The lower-case suboptions determine which operation will be done.

Searching for packages

pacman -Ss <text>    # Searches the repository
pacman -Qs <text>    # Searches installed packages

Both the names and the descriptions of packages will be searched.

Obtaining information on a package

pacman -Si <package>    # Remote repository
pacman -Qi <package>    # Installed packages

Files belonging to a package

To obtain a list of files that belong to an installed package:

pacman -Ql <package>

Which package owns a file

To find out which installed package owns any given file:

pacman -Qo /path/to/file

Unneeded packages

To list packages that were installed as dependencies and that are not needed anymore:

pacman -Qdt