Pamac wants to update, but reason unclear

Support AUR
#1

Hello everyone,

pamac is suggesting me to install the electron9 AUR package by jonathon. But this package takes hours to compile, so I’d rather not. Therefore I’m trying to find out which other package I have installed which needs electron9, so I can decide if electron9 needs to be updated or I can just remove the package that needs it. The pamac gui says “Installed as a dependency of another package”. So after some googling I found that I have to ask pacman for this. This is the output:

$ pacman -Qi electron9
Name            : electron9
Version         : 9.4.3-1
Description     : Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://electronjs.org/
Licenses        : MIT  custom
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : c-ares  ffmpeg  gtk3  http-parser  libevent  libxslt  libxss  minizip  nss
                  re2  snappy
Optional Deps   : kde-cli-tools: file deletion support (kioclient5)
                  libappindicator-gtk3: StatusNotifierItem support [installed]
                  trash-cli: file deletion support (trash-put)
                  xdg-utils: open URLs with desktop's default (xdg-email, xdg-open)
                  [installed]
Required By     : None
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 154,67 MiB
Packager        : Nicola Squartini <tensor5@gmail.com>
Build Date      : za 06 feb 2021 11:22:11 CET
Install Date    : vr 19 feb 2021 17:38:54 CET
Install Reason  : Installed as a dependency for another package
Install Script  : No

Is there another way to figure out why this package is needed? Am I using the wrong command?

One thing I am suspecting is that skype needs electron. Here’s the pacman output for the skype I have installed:

$ pacman -Qi skypeforlinux-preview-bin
Name            : skypeforlinux-preview-bin
Version         : 8.69.76.76-1
Description     : Skype for Linux - Preview/Insider Version
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : http://www.skype.com
Licenses        : custom
Groups          : None
Provides        : skypeforlinux  skype
Depends On      : gtk3  libxss  alsa-lib  libxtst  libsecret  nss  glibc>=2.28-4
Optional Deps   : org.freedesktop.secrets: keyring/password support [installed]
                  libappindicator-gtk3: systray icon support [installed]
Required By     : None
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : skypeforlinux  skypeforlinux-bin  skypeforlinux-stable-bin
                  skypeforlinux-beta-bin  skype
Replaces        : skypeforlinux-bin
Installed Size  : 271,48 MiB
Packager        : Unknown Packager
Build Date      : di 16 feb 2021 09:49:07 CET
Install Date    : di 16 feb 2021 09:49:27 CET
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : Yes

It seems that my skype does not need electron (which makes sense I think, because I specifically selected the “-bin” version to avoid problems like this).

Can someone help me further debug this, before I remove some component of a program that is (unfortunately) critical to my daily work?

(As far as I can tell there are no other updates needed in the pamac gui, so I’m assuming my system is up to date. I’m running manjaro stable.)

1 Like
#2

Welcome to the Forum!

It seems that this package isn’t needed by any other package in your system.

To be sure run this command

pacman -Qdt

to list all packages no longer required as dependencies for other packages (orphans).

If electron9 is in the output of the above command, it means that it’s not needed in your system.

Pamac has also options for dealing with orphan packages:
https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Pamac#Dealing_with_Orphaned_Packages

Useful readings:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_maintenance#Check_for_orphans_and_dropped_packages

3 Likes
#3

There are 2 AUR packages for electron9

$ pamac search electron9
electron9-bin                                                      9.4.4-1  AUR 
    Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies -
    version 9 - binary version
electron9                                                          9.4.4-2  AUR 
    Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies

If you do need it, the -bin package should not take hours to compile

2 Likes
#4

@nikgnomic @bill_t Thank you for your responses! That fixes my issue, and possibly anything that will break in the next 10 minutes! For completeness, I used the pamac remove -o command from the wiki, and after refreshing the pamac gui a few times it stopped prompting to install electron9.

3 Likes
#5

I researched this too late…
Had to stop working now to build this thing… it is really annoying… it is about to explode my cpu…

1300/32588

maybe I should grab a cup of coffee…

I left windows so I wouldnt be bothered with infinite updates that hang the system… well guess what!?

“UPDATE ELECTRON9” the system says…

who in a clear mind thought “maybe we should make all the users build their own chromium and stuff… it takes only a few hours to compile” !?

---- after a couple minutes ----

I’m back, I canceled the build and indeed electron9 was not required for any packages…

pamac remove -o

solved the issue after making sure that

pacman -Qdt

listed electron9

thank you for the posts before that helped me to solve the issue now I can get back to work :slight_smile:
first, lets take a ritalin and coffee!

ps: how do you insert this syntax highlight to shell commands? couldnt find in the editor here… only quote pre

echo "Hello, World!"

got it… three backtick (grave accent) en.wikipedia Grave_accent (forum doesnt allow me to post links) enclosing the desired command do the trick (you have to make a block [line break before and after the three backticks] or it wont color it…)

#6

Psssssssst:

If you haven’t reached the required Trust Level for posting links yet, enclose them in singgle backticks. Like this:

`https://startpage.com`

It willl casuse it to be reendered like this: https://startpage.com

Hope this helps!

Edit:

Also see Tutorial Content Creation Guide
Don’t let the word “Tutorial” fool you, like it fooled me.

2 Likes
#7

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