Arch Linux pacman¶

ID: pacman
Home page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/pacman
Upstream stars: ⭐ 66
Last commit: 2026-01-25
Version requirement: >= 5
Platforms: 🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · ⨂ Unix
Operations: installed · outdated · orphans · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup · doctor
purl types: pkg:alpm · pkg:pacman
CLI name: pacman
Every call: pacman --noconfirm --color never <command>
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: pacman-based
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/pacman.py

Arch Linux’s native package manager, covering the official repositories.

mpm forces --noconfirm and --color never on every call so pacman runs unattended and prints uncolored text the regexes can parse. Installed packages come from --query and upgradable ones from --query --upgrades; searches hit the sync databases via --sync --search.

The Pacaur, Paru and Yay subclasses are AUR helpers that reuse every parser and forced argument here unchanged, overriding only the binary (and, for yay, adding a release-age cooldown).

Command equivalences with other managers are listed in Pacman/Rosetta.

Caution

--query --upgrades only reports updates for packages tracked in a sync database, so foreign packages (installed with pacman -U, as AUR helpers do) stay invisible to the base pacman binary. The subclasses escape this because their own binary also queries the AUR RPC. This upstream behavior is not confirmed on a live Arch box: see Pacman.outdated().

What `mpm` adds to `pacman`¶

Through mpm, pacman gains:

a one-command cleanup --orphans that removes every orphaned dependency at once
--extended search, to match against package descriptions

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover pacman alongside pacaur, pamac, paru, yay and any other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `pacman` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know pacman: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `pacman`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`pacman --query`	`mpm --pacman installed`
List outdated packages	`pacman --query --upgrades`	`mpm --pacman outdated`
Search for a package	`pacman --sync --search fire`	`mpm --pacman search fire`
Install a package	`sudo pacman --sync firefox`	`mpm install pkg:pacman/firefox`
Upgrade one package	`sudo pacman --sync firefox`	`mpm --pacman upgrade firefox`
Upgrade everything	`sudo pacman --sync --refresh --sysupgrade`	`mpm --pacman upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`sudo pacman --remove firefox`	`mpm remove pkg:pacman/firefox`
List orphaned dependencies	`pacman --query --deps --unrequired`	`mpm --pacman orphans`
Clear caches	`sudo pacman --sync --clean --clean`	`mpm --pacman cleanup --cache`
Run health checks	`pacman --database --check`	`mpm --pacman doctor`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported	Notes
`installed`	✓
`outdated`	✓
`orphans`	✓
`search`	✓	extended search backfilled by `mpm`
`install`	✓
`upgrade`	✓
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓	`--orphans` also drops the package’s orphaned dependencies
`sync`	✓
`cleanup`	✓	`--orphans` sweep backfilled by `mpm`
`doctor`	✓

Selecting and configuring `pacman`¶

Deselect pacman for a single run with --no-pacman, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
pacman = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every pacman call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.pacman]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template pacman prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around pacman, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --pacman dump pacman.toml, then mpm restore pacman.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --pacman sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).
Gate CI on health: mpm --pacman doctor relays Arch Linux pacman’s own diagnosis and exits non-zero on trouble.

Privilege escalation¶

System-wide manager: mpm wraps its privileged operations in sudo out of the box. Instead of letting the tool prompt mid-run, mpm primes the credential cache up-front, with a single branded password prompt at most. Turn escalation off for rootless setups with --no-sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Concurrency¶

mpm never runs pacman at the same time as pacaur, pamac, paru, pikaur, trizen or yay: they all reach the pacman database (/var/lib/pacman/db.lck), and two of them mutating at once fail to init their transaction. Each mutating operation waits for the previous one, even with a higher --jobs, while managers outside this group keep running in parallel.

Only mutations are held back. The read-only queries (installed, outdated, search) take no backend lock and stay fully concurrent.

Cooldown¶

State of Arch Linux pacman’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: Distro binary archives (pkg:deb, pkg:rpm, pkg:alpm, pkg:apk)
Retraction: Index revert: removal is an archive operation and the mirror is rebuilt without the package. Debian, for one, requires filing an RM: bug against ftp.debian.org (developers-reference)
Publish date: ❌ the version string is the distro maintainer’s build, carrying no upstream publication date

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Version probe¶

The version is probed by running:

$ pacman --version
 .--.                  Pacman v6.0.1 - libalpm v13.0.1
/ _.-' .-.  .-.  .-.   Copyright (C) 2006-2021 Pacman Development Team
\  '-. '-'  '-'  '-'   Copyright (C) 2002-2006 Judd Vinet
 '--'
                    This program may be freely redistributed under
                    the terms of the GNU General Public License.

and extracted with:

r".*Pacman\s+v(?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the manager source: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know Arch Linux pacman well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ pacman --noconfirm --query
a52dec 0.7.4-11
aalib 1.4rc5-14
abseil-cpp 20211102.0-2
accountsservice 22.08.8-2
acl 2.3.1-2
acme.sh 3.0.2-1
acpi 1.7-3
acpid 2.0.33-1

$ pacman --noconfirm --query --upgrades
linux 4.19.1.arch1-1 -> 4.19.2.arch1-1
linux-headers 4.19.1.arch1-1 -> 4.19.2.arch1-1

$ pacman --noconfirm --color never --query --deps --unrequired
gtest 1.14.0-1
libwlroots 0.16.2-2

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --pacman installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Upstream project¶

Metrics	`pacman/pacman`
Activity
Popularity
Metadata

Changelog¶

8.0.0.dev0 (unreleased)
- Stop running the AUR helpers concurrently with pacman and with each other. All of them drive the same pacman database, either by shelling out to sudo pacman or, for pamac, through Manjaro’s own libalpm binding, so two mutating at once failed to init their transaction.
7.4.0 (2026-07-25)
- sync now escalates through sudo like its other write commands: refreshing the sync databases writes root-owned state.
6.2.0 (2026-03-25)
- Add --color never option to all invocations.
5.6.0 (2022-09-26)
- Fix pacman install operation. Closes #766.
5.3.0 (2022-06-25)
- Run install, upgrade, remove and cleanup operations with sudo.
5.2.0 (2022-06-16)
- Add remove operation.
4.13.0 (2022-04-16)
- Add support for pacman. Closes #416.