Heh. So my GUI “Add/Remove Software” app (aka “Pamac”) is configured to include the AUR, which is convenient for checking updates routinely.
I have it checking every 6 hours, because updates are exciting… errr, I mean, because security.
But there are a couple of apps that update so frequently, that the red notification in my taskbar is driving me a bit crazy (I keep asking myself: “Didn’t I just do this?”):
visual-studio-code-bin
The other apps are well behaved, and I still want to check them every 6 hours.
What I know:
There’s some way to put individual apps on an ignore list.
That doesn’t work because:
I don’t want to manually check for updates for this app.
Question:
Is there a way I can make this one demonic app only check updates once a week or once a fortnight, whilst the rest of my pacman/AUR apps are still being checked every 6 hours?
No there is no such way, you will end up in a partial upgrade state which will eventually break your system. Not with the vscode app but could still happen.
Six hours are too often.
The only way I can think of would be to use the Snap package instead of AUR package
I’d stay away from a sandboxed IDE, vscode has also a tar package. As for the updates you can set them to your liking.
The answer two the question
Q: Pamac: Can you customise or throttle update frequency on a per-app basis?
A: No, no cannot
There is several approaches to maintaining custom packages.
In my opinion one should always manage custom packages (AUR) outside the package manager .
I am using a script combined with a user service/timer combo.
It uses yay or paru to check a predefined list of custom packages and upon changes it uses the notify-send to inform the user.
[root tip] [HowTo] Check if your AUR build scripts have been updated
It is possible to use e.g. repoctl to maintain a custom repo which then can be either online or a local file based repository.
Using a custom repo in pacman.conf detaches your custom packages from AUR.