this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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I think you are a little confused at the problem here. The issue is that partial updates are not supported. The reason for this is very simple, Arch ensures that any given package list works on its own, but not that packages from different versions of the package list work together. So if Firefox depends on libssl the new Firefox package may depend on a new libssl function. If you install that version of Firefox without updating libssl it will cause problems.
There is no way around this limitation. If you install that new Firefox without he new libssl you will have problems. No matter how you try to rules lawyer it. Now 99% of the time this works. Typically packages don't depend on new library functions right away. But sometimes they do, and that is why as a rule this is unsupported. You are welcome to try it, but if it breaks don't complain to the devs, they never promised it would work. But this isn't some policy where you can find a loophole. It is a technical limitation. If you manage to find a loophole people aren't going to say "oh, that should work, let's fix it" it will break and you will be on your own to fix it.
Focusing on your commands. The thing is that
pacman -S firefoxis always fine on its own. If Firefox is already installed it will do nothing, if it isn't it will install the version from the current package list. Both of those operations are supported. Alsopacman -Rs firefox && pacman -S firefoxis really no different than justpacman -S firefox(other than potentially causing problems if the package can't be allowed to be removed due to dependencies). So your command isn't accomplishing anything even if it did somehow magically work around the rules.What is really the problem is
pacman -Sy. This command updates the package list without actually updating any packages. This will enter you system into a precarious state where any new package installed or updated (example ourpacman -S firefoxcommand form earlier) will be a version that is mismatched with the rest of your system. This is unsupported and will occasionally cause problems. Generally speaking you shouldn't runpacman -Sy, any time you are using-Syyou should also be passing-u. This ensures that the package list and your installed packages are updated together.But I'm not doing
pacman -Sy package. That is not what I am talking about. I am only talking aboutpacman -S package, which is not updating the system partially. IF the package depends on something else to update, then the system would need to be updated. But that is not what I was asking, because I only talk about the package with-S package. I just chosefirefoxas an example, it could have been any other package.To make it clear, when I say
-S firefox, then I mean really that without updating a dependency like libssl. The idea is to install only new packages without updating anything on the system. I guess as you say it depends on the dependencies of the package, if this is feasible.But that is my point. Just running
pacman -S firefoxis fine as long as you didn't runpacman -Syat some point earlier. It won't update anything, even dependencies. It will just install the version that matches your current package list and system including the right version of any dependencies if they aren't already installed.But that means if you already have Firefox installed it will do nothing.
We can install a new package if it wasn't installed with
pacman -S firefox. That is not a partial upgrade of the system. Right? What i don't understand is, when I uninstall withpacman -Rs firefox, delete the cached firefox package (only that file), then the system is in the same state as before I installed it. Then-S firefoxshould be okay, right? And it even looks up the new version. This is my question, if that would work correctly.IF no dependency tries to update too. Off course in that case I would stop. Without
pacman -Sy, I never do that anyway, only-Syu.That's all you need to know. As long as you always use
pacman -Syuyou will be fine.pacman -Syis the real problem. The wiki page is pretty clear about the sequences of commands that are problematic https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported.This isn't correct. It won't look up the new version. Assuming that the system was in a consistent state it will download the exact same package that you deleted. The system only ever "updates" when you run
pacman -Sy. Until you use-yall packages are effectively pinned at a specific version. If the version that gets installed is different than the one you removed it probably means that you were breaking the partial update rule previously.To add to the other comment, package managers keep a local copy of the list of available packages and the version. When you do a
pacman -S xxxthe package manager looks up xxx in the cache and downloads the package from whatever mirror youre using as well as any dependencies, looking them up in the same way from your cache. This works for a while even if theres a new update available because mirrors usually keep a few previous versions.Once you do a
pacman -Syyou update your cache to the latest one. If you then update xxx, it will update xxx and pull in any dependency updates required, but any other packages that depended on the same packages dont get updated, leaving you in a partially upgraded state.