A Guide To Using The Pacman Package Manager

In previous guides I have shown you how to install applications on Debian based Linux distributions using apt-get and I have also shown you how to install applications on Red Hat based Linux distributions using yum.

In this guide I will show you how to install packages using the command line within Arch based Linux distributions such as Manjaro.

You can view a list of all the packages installed on your system using the following command:

pacman -Q

This will return a list of all the applications on your computer and their version numbers.

You can retrieve more information about a package or indeed packages by supplying various query options as follows:

pacman -Q -c octopi

The above command will show me the changelog for octopi if it exists. If it doesn't exist a message will be displayed telling you that no changelog is available.

pacman -Q -d

The above command shows you all the files that are installed as dependencies to other packages.

pacman -Q -d -t

This will show you all the orphaned dependencies installed on your computer.

If you want to see all of the explicitly installed packages use the following command:

pacman -Q -e

An explicit package is one that you actually chose to install as opposed to a package that was installed as a dependency to other packages.

You can see which explicit packages have no dependencies by using the following command:

pacman -Q -e -t

To see which groups packages belong to you can use the following command:

pacman -Q -g

This will list the name of the group followed by the name of the package.

If you want to see all the packages in a particular group you can specify the group name:

pacman -Q -g base

If you want to know the name, description and all other manner of details about a package use the following command:

pacman -Q -i packagename

The output includes:

• name
• version
• description
• architecture
• URL to package's website
• License
• Groups
• Provides
• Depends On
• Optional Deps
• Required By
• Optional For
• Conflicts With
• Replaces
• Installed Size
• Name Of Packager
• Build Date
• Install Date
• Install Reason
• Install Script
• Validated

To check the health of a particular package you can use the following command:

pacman -Q -k packagename

This will return output similar to the following:

scratch: 1208 total files, 0 missing files

You can run this command against all the installed packages:

pacman -Q -k

You can find all the files that are owned by a specific package using the following command:

pacman -Q -l packagename

This returns the package name and the path to files that it owns. You can specify multiple packages after the -l.

You can find manually installed packages using the following command:

pacman -Q -m

Packages installed using yaourt such as Google Chrome will be listed using this command.

This is the inverse to the previous command and only shows packages installed via the sync databases.

pacman -Q -n

To find packages that need to be updated use the following command:

pacman -Q -u

This will return a list of packages, their version numbers, and the latest version numbers.

To install a package use the following command:

pacman -S packagename

You may need to use the sudo command to elevate your permissions for this command to run. Alternatively, switch to a user with elevated permissions using the su command.

When a package is available in multiple repositories you can choose which repository to use by specifying it in the command as follows:

pacman -S repositoryname/packagename

Installing a package with pacman will automatically download and install any dependencies.

You can also install a group of packages such as a desktop environment like XFCE.

When you specify a group name the output will be along the lines of:

There are 17 members in group xfce4
Repository extra
1) exo 2) garcon 3) gtk-xfce-engine

You can choose to install all the packages in the group by pressing return. Alternatively, you can install individual packages by providing a comma-separated list of numbers (i.e. 1,2,3,4,5). If you want to install all the packages between 1 and 10 you can also use a hyphen (i.e. 1-10).

To upgrade all of the out-of-date packages use the following command:

pacman -S -u

Sometimes you want to upgrade the packages but for one particular package, you want it to stay at an older version (because you know the newer version has removed a feature or is broken). You can use the following command for this:

pacman -S -u --ignore packagename

You can view a list of the available packages in the sync database with the following command:

pacman -S -l

You can find detailed information about a package in the sync database using the following command:

pacman -S -i packagename

If you just want to search for a package in the sync database use the following command:

pacman -S -s packagename

The results will be a list of all available packages matching the search criteria.

You can make sure the sync database is up to date using the following command:

pacman -S -y

This should be used prior to running the upgrade command. It is also useful to run this if you haven't done it in a while so that when you search you are getting the latest results.

Throughout this guide, you will have noticed that I have specified each switch on its own. For example:

pacman -S -u

You can, of course, combine switches:

pacman -Su