Perpetual update available via pamac

I installed raspberry-overlay-git 493f431-1
It installs and seems to work as expected.

However, pamac continues to show an update for this package. I have updated it several times with pamac. I have uninstalled and then reinstalled it. pamac continues to show an update.

Not sure where to turn with this. A repo issue, a pkgbuild. pamac, or something funky in my system?

Because it’s a -git version, it will never be considered up-to-date. It always keep pulling the newest version with the newest commit from their git whenever you run an update.

You can just leave it sitting there, and run an update for that package whenever you want.

It’s a PKGBUILD issue. The pkgver is generated improperly. It only generates the latest SHA1 hash which is random and doesn’t increment. Edit the PKBUILD and change the pkgver() function:

pkgver() {
  cd "$pkgname"
  printf "r%s.%s" "$(git rev-list --count HEAD)" "$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)"
}

See VCS package guidelines - ArchWiki

1 Like

Oh is it really? Every -git package I have on my computer is always considered out of date.

Well, do you update them? :wink:

I did every so often. But it kept being considered out of date every time even though I updated it. The AUR page for each package always had people saying is normal because it pulls the newest commit every update.

I no longer use -git packages though as of this month.

Well, it still shows an update is available. But it did change package version.

The package does not seem to change, either considered complete or no longer maintained, I guess.
Last modified 04/19/2018

-git packages normally do not need to be updated on AUR, because they pull it from git directly. The only times people really update them are if dependencies change or something breaks.

1 Like

Right, because the AUR maintainer didn’t do it right to begin with. This is where using the epoch comes into play:

❯ vercmp
vercmp (pacman) v5.2.2

Compare package version numbers using pacman's version comparison logic.

Usage: vercmp <ver1> <ver2>

Output values:
  < 0 : if ver1 < ver2
    0 : if ver1 == ver2
  > 0 : if ver1 > ver2
❯ vercmp 493f431-1 1:r39-45837b4-1
-1

See how adding the epoch bumps the pkgver so it’s newer.

Just edit the PKGBUILD and add epoch=1 below the pkgver and it will never prompt you to update again.

Thank you, that did resolve the issue. Guess I am just going to have to learn more about pkgbuild.

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