Arch Linux pacman¶

ID: pacman
Home page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/pacman
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Operations: installed · outdated · orphans · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup · doctor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outdated().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Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover pacman alongside pacaur, paru, yay and any other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole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List outdated packages	`pacman --query --upgrades`	`mpm --pacman outdated`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.

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.

Changelog¶

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.