How to Use Pacman to Manage Software on Arch Linux

Pacman is the default command line package management tool for Arch Linux and its derivatives. With it you can easily install, remove, update, and upgrade packages along with all required dependencies.

Pacman is a software package manager created by Arch Linux creator Judd Vinet. It is one of the main difference between Arch Linux and other major distributions like RedHat / Fedora / CentOS and Ubuntu / Debian.

Pacman, stands for Package Manager, combines a simple binary package format with an easy-to-use build system. The aim of Pacman is to easily manage software packages.

This guide applies to Arch Linux and all the other Arch-based Linux distros using Pacman as the package manager. So, let’s see how to use Pacman to install, remove, update, and querying packages in Arch Linux with simple examples.

Refresh Package Lists

Like in all Linux operating systems, before installing any packages, or updating the system, we must update the package lists.

pacman -Sy

:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core            132,1 KiB  2,58 MiB/s 00:00 [######################] 100%
 extra          1663,6 KiB  3,48 MiB/s 00:00 [######################] 100%
 community         5,1 MiB  3,17 MiB/s 00:02 [######################] 100%
 multilib        162,2 KiB  2,64 MiB/s 00:00 [######################] 100%

Searching for Package

To search for a specific package, for example vlc, from a sync database (remote server), run:

pacman -Ss vlc

extra/phonon-qt5-vlc 0.11.1-2
    Phonon VLC backend for Qt5
extra/vlc 3.0.11.1-1
    Multi-platform MPEG, VCD/DVD, and DivX player
community/playerctl 2.2.1-1
    mpris media player controller and lib for spotify, vlc, audacious, bmp, xmms2, and others.

Getting Information About Package

To display the detailed information of the given package from the sync database, run:

pacman -Si vlc

Repository      : extra
Name            : vlc
Version         : 3.0.11.1-1
Description     : Multi-platform MPEG, VCD/DVD, and DivX player
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Licenses        : LGPL2.1  GPL2
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : a52dec  libdvbpsi  libxpm  libdca  libproxy  lua  libidn  libmatroska  taglib  libmpcdec  ffmpeg  faad2  libupnp libmad  libmpeg2  xcb-util-keysyms  libtar  libxinerama  libsecret  libarchive  qt5-base  qt5-x11extras  qt5-svg freetype2  fribidi  harfbuzz  fontconfig  libxml2  gnutls  libplacebo  wayland-protocols  aribb24
Optional Deps   : avahi: service discovery using bonjour protocol
                  aom: AOM AV1 codec
                  gst-plugins-base-libs: for libgst plugins
                  dav1d: dav1d AV1 decoder
                  libdvdcss: decoding encrypted DVDs
                  .........
Conflicts With  : vlc-plugin
Replaces        : vlc-plugin
Download Size   : 11,68 MiB
Installed Size  : 57,72 MiB
Packager        : Maxime Gauduin <alucryd@archlinux.org>
Build Date      :  5.08.2020 (ср) 9:17:43
Validated By    : MD5 Sum  SHA-256 Sum  Signature

Installing a Package with pacman

Installing a package with pacman is really easy. Just run the following command:

pacman -S vlc

resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (11) aribb24-1.0.3-3  glslang-8.13.3743-1  libdvbpsi-1:1.3.3-2  libebml-1.4.0-1  libmatroska-1.6.2-1  libplacebo-1.29.1-3 libtar-1.2.20-5  libupnp-1.6.25-2  shaderc-2020.0-1  spirv-tools-2020.2-1  vlc-3.0.11.1-1

Total Download Size:   15,59 MiB
Total Installed Size:  80,28 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]

As a result, this process will automatically identify all the necessary dependencies and take care of it.

Installing a Local Package

Pacman stores all downloaded packages in /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ folder. In case, you want to install the locally downloaded package, for example vlc located into /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ directory, go to the folder where the package is located and enter the following command:

cd /var/cache/pacman/pkg/
pacman -U vlc-3.0.11-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

Update/Upgrade a Package

To update a single package, for example rsync, run:

pacman -S rsync

resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) rsync-3.2.3-1

Total Download Size:   0,30 MiB
Total Installed Size:  0,57 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      0,01 MiB

To update all packages in your system, just run:

pacman -Syu

:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (58) accerciser-3.36.3-1  ansible-2.9.12-1  attica-5.73.0-1  epiphany-3.36.4-1  ffmpeg-2:4.3.1-2  file-roller-3.36.3-1 gdm-3.36.3-3  gnome-desktop-1:3.36.5-1  gst-plugins-ugly-1.16.2-4 ....

Total Download Size:    96,07 MiB
Total Installed Size:  508,63 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:       -0,27 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] 

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). So, if vlc was causing the problem, you could use the following command for this:

pacman -Syu --ignore=vlc

Remove a Package with pacman

In order to remove a package with all its dependencies, run the following command:

pacman -Rs vlc

checking dependencies...

Packages (11) aribb24-1.0.3-3  glslang-8.13.3743-1  libdvbpsi-1:1.3.3-2  libebml-1.4.0-1  libmatroska-1.6.2-1  libplacebo-1.29.1-3 libtar-1.2.20-5  libupnp-1.6.25-2  shaderc-2020.0-1  spirv-tools-2020.2-1  vlc-3.0.11.1-1

Total Removed Size:  80,28 MiB

:: Do you want to remove these packages? [Y/n]

This command will completely remove vlc package and all dependencies. Pacman will keep the important configuration files with the extension: .pacsave while removing packages.

In addition, if you no longer want them and want to free up hard drive, you can remove the package along with all its configuration files with command:

pacman -Rns vlc

Remove Orphaned (Unused) Packages

As you might know, there will still be some orphaned (unused) packages in your Arch Linux after removing a package. These orphaned packages are not required anymore, so we can get rid of them to free up some space. To remove these packages, run:

pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq)

If no orphans were found, the output is:

error: argument '-' specified with empty stdin

Searching for Already Installed Packages

Sometimes you want to check for a specific package if it is installed locally. In this case you can do it using the command below:

pacman -Qs vlc

local/vlc 3.0.11.1-1
    Multi-platform MPEG, VCD/DVD, and DivX player

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

pacman -Q

Find All Files Owned by a Package

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

pacman -Ql vlc

vlc /usr/
vlc /usr/bin/
vlc /usr/bin/cvlc
vlc /usr/bin/nvlc
vlc /usr/bin/qvlc
vlc /usr/bin/rvlc
vlc /usr/bin/svlc
vlc /usr/bin/vlc
vlc /usr/bin/vlc-wrapper
vlc /usr/include/
vlc /usr/include/vlc/
vlc /usr/include/vlc/deprecated.h
vlc /usr/include/vlc/libvlc.h
...

This returns the package name and the path to files that it owns.

Find the Package Owner of the File

If you want to check the location of the binary executable file owned by a package, use the -Qo flag.

pacman -Qo /usr/bin/vlc

/usr/bin/vlc is owned by vlc 3.0.11.1-1

Download a Package

Sometimes, you might want to just download a package and keep it in your cache without installing it. For example, you might plan to use the downloaded packages in future. To do so, run:

pacman -Sw vlc

resolving dependencies...

Packages (1) vlc-3.0.11.1-1

Total Download Size:  11,68 MiB

:: Proceed with download? [Y/n] 
:: Retrieving packages...
 vlc-3.0.11.1-1-x86_64             11,7 MiB  3,71 MiB/s 00:03 [################################] 100%
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                             [################################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                        [################################] 100%

The above command will only download the vlc package, and keep it in the cache folder. Pacman stores all downloaded packages in /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ folder.

Clean Up Package Cache

All packages that we downloaded during the installation will be stored in the cache directory i.e /var/cache/pacman/pkg/. If you don’t remove them periodically, it will slowly eat up your hard drive space, and sooner or later you could end up with low disk space.

So it is good to remove the cache periodically. To remove all the cached packages that are not currently installed, and the unused sync database, execute:

pacman -Sc

Packages to keep:
  All locally installed packages

Cache directory: /var/cache/pacman/pkg/
:: Do you want to remove all other packages from cache? [Y/n] 
removing old packages from cache...

Database directory: /var/lib/pacman/
:: Do you want to remove unused repositories? [Y/n] 
removing unused sync repositories...

In addition, if you want to remove all files from the cache, use the clean ‘c’ switch twice. Of course, this is the most aggressive approach and will leave nothing in the cache folder:

pacman -Scc

Cache directory: /var/cache/pacman/pkg/
:: Do you want to remove ALL files from cache? [y/N] y
removing all files from cache...

Database directory: /var/lib/pacman/
:: Do you want to remove unused repositories? [Y/n] 
removing unused sync repositories...

Conclusion

Arch Linux is one of the most reputed and popular Linux distributions out there. This guide has covered most of the commands that you need to know when using Pacman. Hopefully it was helpful in your journey with Arch-based distros.

You can find detailed documentation about Pacman package manager in the official Arch Linux Wiki.