Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆
What does this error mean?
This is not an error but only a warning, because it expresses an “abnormal” situation which may or may not be harmful.
That situation is exactly as described by the message: the package installed on your system is a newer version than the one in the repositories.
How did that happen?
There are two major cases:
- You switched from the stable branch to another, in which newer versions of packages are tested. By updating from that branch, you can get those newer versions early. Then, by switching back to the stable branch, you effectively (temporarily) have a newer version of those packages than those in the branch.
- Maintainers reverted the package to an earlier version in the repositories. This sometimes happen when a major issue is found, in order to limit the spread of that issue occurring to users.
How to fix this?
There are two cases:
-
If the newer version works on your end, you don’t have anything to do. The message will disappear on its own when the package is updated on the repositories.
-
If the newer version does not work on your end, if you want to stay aligned with the repositories, or if you simply do not want the warning to appear, you can downgrade the package by forcing the package manager to install the version from the repositories:
sudo pacman -Syuu