Pacman overwrite files

[michaldybczak]

I’m updating a system that wasn’t updated for many months, and with Plasma changes, many packages complain that the file already exists in the system.

Quick question. What is the command option to make an update to force overwrite existing files?

I saw that here many times but somehow cannot find it when needed and this isn’t mentioned on regular sites about pacman.

Thanks

[mithrial]

pacman -Syu --overwrite "*"

[Wollie]

@michaldybczak

somehow cannot find it

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/pacman#Troubleshooting

[Yochanan]

@michaldybczak

many packages complain that the file already exists in the system.

What packages? That should normally not happen. What did you do?

@michaldybczak

with Plasma changes

That’s not why. Everyone else updated just fine.

@michaldybczak

Quick question. What is the command option to make an update to force overwrite existing files?

That should never need to be used.

@mithrial

pacman -Syu --overwrite "*"

NEVER overwrite globally.

[Teo]

This is exactly the case in which the OP should post the full command output. Overwrite…what? Which error? And so on.

[cscs]

“already exists on filesystem” is not something that will just happen because you didnt update for a while.
Its either the product of other user interaction …
OR simply missing recent update announcements, like this one:

@philm

2023-10-09

glibc-locales update requires manual intervention

If you had the old glibc-locales package from the extra repo installed, the update to the new core package will need manual intervention:

sudo pacman -Syu glibc-locales --overwrite /usr/lib/locale/\*/\*