The community can be harsh, it is true @abracadabra Quite often I am horrified at the attitudes and judgements of my fellow moderators, and sometimes the Team members themselves have bad days.
Sometimes people jump to conclusions, are judgemental, and sometimes unfairly - I’m the first to admit this.
Let me look into this issue, I wish to support you in your endeavour. Remember, this is a technical forum, where we value accurate and useful information… it is not a reddit, where the number of up/downvotes counts more as validation than anything else.
The core issue - Partial Upgrades are Unsupported
- Arch and Arch-based systems explicitly forbid partial upgrades.
- Running
pacman -Sy <pkg>syncs the repo database BEFORE installing, which creates a desynchronised state between the new database and the old installed packages. This breaks systems due to dependency mismatches. - Read your Bible. If you don’t like it, then go to the Arch forum and tell them how ignorant and stupid they are.
The Dangerous Claim:
- Some idiot claimed “You can use `pacman -S all day long without sync issues if you don’t run -Sy first”.
- Why is this stupid?
-
pacman -Suses the local database which is old, and installing new packages MAY pull in outdated dependencies IF the repos changed (which is why we synchronise and update).
-
- Pull in outdated dependencies (if the package requires newer libraries than what’s installed).
-
- Create inconsistencies that will compound in time.
Example:
- run
pacman -S firefox3 months after you last did an-Syu. As the local database is 3 months out of date, and the new firefox requires a newerglibcthan you have, then it will be broken.
Why the comments require removal:
- Context matters - the user was in a broken state from the error
sudo pacman -S pacmanand recommendingpacman -Sis normalising very unsafe habits. Remember, the forum is supposed to be useful and generally safe and reliable information… not a reddit chat where anything goes.
Community Standards:
Arch and Manjaro must aggressively prohibit unsafe advice. Even if -S alone isn’t as bad, it is still risky. Yes, you can get away with it ‘all day long’ on a good day… You can play Russian Roulette on your own time, but not in this forum.
Justified or Unjustified:
- Accusing other members of the forum of ignorance ignores the safety principle.
- Complaints about the community disregard why rules exist; The very design of pacman makes it extremely difficult to recover from partial upgrades, and also can waste a lot of time doing so… Not understanding this is common, it is simply the view of an uninformed person (which we could describe as ‘ignorance’).
Moving On:
Reading your statement, I could rephrase it to be acceptable:
“While pacman -S uses the local database and avoids immediate sync issues, it should ONLY be used if you recently ran -Syu. Otherwise, always run -Syu first.”
Key Takeaways
- Always run
sudo pacman -Syubefore installing/updating anything. This is not negotiable. - Never run
pacman -Syalone orpacman -Sy <pkg>. pacman -S <pkg>is safe only if your system is fully updated.
Judgement time
The staff acted entirely correctly in this case to prevent the spread of harmful advice, even if the comment contained a badly phrased seed of truth.
Safety is more important than pedantry in a support forum.
Advice:
Do not pursue, or argue about this matter further. You may consider this a warning, and should you further spam the forum with unjustified complaints about a fully justifiable action, then I will not warn or discuss the matter with you further.
