Pamac 11.5.2-2 ignores IgnorePkg in pacman.conf completely

Hi

First of all, I’m completely new to this forum so excuse me if I post in the wrong place. Just tell me I’ll gladly move the post if it’s better suited elsewhere.

On to the topic:

After update to libpamac 11.5.2-2 Pamac now completely ignores packages stated in the IgnorePkg. I got licenced software on my machine that needs to be a specific version in order to be registered with a keyfile and therefore I asked the older version of Pamac to ignore it which put it in pacman.conf under IgnorePkg. That worked just fine until today that the update to libpamac (and dependencies) arrived, updating it to 11.5.2-2. Now it wil tell me that I got updates and when I check it is the ignored software that it will update. It does not ignore it any longer. So I had to downgrade libpamac (and dependencies) to the closest version before the update that I can find in my cache which was 11.5.0-2 and put libpamac (and dependencies) in IgnorePkg. That works just fine but now it is not the mewest upgrade of libpamac (and dependencies) that I use. I’ll keep it that way as long as i need for now until there is a fix for this.

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Can’t reproduce. Please create an upstream issue including your pacman.conf and pamac output showing the problem happening.

I’m talking with him on telegram. It appears to effect an AUR package that is in his ignore list

As AjSlye rightfully state, I’ve only encountered this with an AUR-package that I need to keep at a certain version because of licensing issues. I did not test this with other than AUR as I do not have the need to hold back one of those packages.

To be hornest i need to build this package myself due to the version in AUR getting too new for my use so I needed to go an pick the old package from the AUR and build that myself and then installed it. But even if that packages name is in the ignore list, Pamac insist of upgrading it anyway to the newest in AUR.

Since this issue is fixed it might now find AUR package updates now: Old version for AUR packages updates is not shown (#1333) · Issues · Applications / pamac · GitLab. We had the issue with IgnoreGroup not handled correctly: IgnoreGroup ignored (#1321) · Issues · Applications / pamac · GitLab. So we might need to took a look at it again @guinux

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Please disable check for updates from AUR.

This is two completely different tasks and adding the package to pacman.conf has no effect on custom packages as pacman is not used for AUR.

@linux-aarhus Yeah well it does not use pacman for sure for that task but used to respect IgnorePkg in pacman.conf just as it should nevertheless. Also it writes IgnorePkg to pacman just fine when you select a package in settings/advanced to ignore. It just stops very recently out of nowhere to respect it’s own written lines in pacman.conf and will now take any updates whatsoever even the ones set to be ignored by the user.

If panac should not use pacman.conf for AUR-packages then it sure should at least write those ignored package-lists elsewhere in another file and respect it itself since turning the setting off you mention will also turn of any notification to the user that there is update to any package in AUR. The user could sure still rebuild the package and get the new versions of selected packages but without notifying the user, unless the package is ignored, this is not at all a user friendly way of doing things - and Ignoring single AUR packages used to work just fine until the recent update.

Indeed, it was working like that before, any package in the ignore list, which you can manage from Pamac Settings, will not select the package for update, but since latest Pamac update, it now ignores the IgnorePkg setting, its own setting if you will (even if it is stored in the pacman.conf file, it is still its setting it uses).

I think it was working correctly before, as it was intended by guinux, storing Pamac settings in the pacman.conf file for the ignored packages/groups and using that for repo and AUR, and now it doesn’t.

FYI if like me you want to track progress in gitlab, there is a fix is linked to issue 1334 : Pamac indicates and chooses update of package that is on ignore list (#1334) · Issues · Applications / pamac · GitLab
Hasn’t yet made it into a released package version.

Thanks @philm for the earlier post which helped me figure out where to look.

We pushed new pamac packages to all branches. Pls test.

Seems to be working as intended now on my side, my ignored AUR packages are ignored.

In my opinion - one app writing to another apps config - is confusing at best - bad practise at worst.

When pamac is instructed to ignore packages - it should do so in it’s own config and thus not involve the native package manager.

One app should never change another apps configuration - it will lead to confusion - especially in situations like this where pacman natively ignores anything not in the databases.

This leads to an expectation that when you use pacman -Syu - with an ignorepkg - e.g. postman-bin (which is a custom package) - which then would lead to pacman failure when it cannot find the package in the repos.

Again this is a personal opinion - it is a very bad practise to write another apps config - this should only be done by the user - and the argument against this practise is - that it may create weird issues, which then again may be reported upstream to the developer(s) of the app, which then are completely in the dark, why that issue even is an issue.

Bad practise should never be an issue with software.

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I think having multiple places to add ignored packages is confusing.

You have a point - nevertheless - you should expect the app in question to handle it on it’s own - not configure a second app to follow suit.

It is like me saying to you - I only drink coffee - you cannot have tea anymore.

There is other methods to get that info without actually updating.

The script could even be amended to implement an ignorelist - as you have a requirement for - in fact I just did as I realized I would benefit myself :slight_smile:

If AUR would be officially supported by manjaro this argument would hold. But as it is not, this merging of AUR and pacman into one config file blurs the line even further than only offering AUR in the officially supported pamac app.

$ man pamac
...
DESCRIPTION
       pamac is a libalpm(3) front-end with AUR support.

Does this no longer hold true? Or are we debating what support means?

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Yes we are, they provide a tool for you to manage AUR on your own, but manjaro does not support issues you have with it.

Issues you have with manjaro packages you can expect to get support to. With AUR, you can only expect community support.

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I think you are misunderstanding. Pamac supports AUR, it is intended to be an AUR helper. The fact that Manjaro team doesn’t want to hear about AUR issues doesn’t mean that Pamac development should be altered and AUR shouldn’t be an important feature of Pamac.
Pamac reads the config from pacman.conf file for the ignored packages/groups, it makes sense that if you want the list modified it modifies it in this config file, or else you end up with different config files not supported by all applications and then you need to add same ignored packages/group list to different applications. That makes no sense to me.

no, you add AUR package ignore to pamac config file, and supported packages to pacman config file. This would be logical. As it is now it is “simplified” to have only one place to add them to, but as linux-aarhus said it is not correct. And what i said is that it is most certainly not correct as long as you try to maintain “AUR is not officially supported” even when your by-default provided program uses the config file of the official package manager to make these changes.

While I can understand why Pamac writes the IgnorePkg to pacman.conf as this will ensure consistency in the behavior for the given function and I can live with that but in my opinion

  • adding custom build scripts to pacman.conf in the IgnorePkg has no place
  • that sort of configuration should be kept in pamac.conf where Pamac can do what need be

We should be thankful to the upstream Arch developers that has made pacman smart enough as to consult the package database when checking IgnorePkg and silently ignore.

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