/usr/bin/adb exists, but pacman seems not to know of it

Support
1

I am about to install lineageOS on an old SAMSUNG Galaxy A5. adb is one of the tools needed for this.

Now I apparently have it installed

adb --help
Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.41
Version 33.0.3p2-android-tools
Installed as /usr/bin/adb
....

which adb
/usr/bin/adb

however it seems like 34 would be the current version and it seems to matter using the most recent version. Now, despite what I posted above it seems pacman does not now of adb and I am wondering how I can find out more about the /usr/bin/adb that obviously exists and how to get rid of it cleanly.

Maybe it even is irrelevant to my current task where I can run adb34 independently, but I still would like to get to the bottom of this for the sake of getting more comfortable with Manjaro/pacman.

EDIT: “pacman does not know of it”

$ pacman -Qi adb
error: package 'adb' was not found

$ pacman -Sl | grep adb
extra mariadb 10.10.3-1
extra mariadb-clients 10.10.3-1
extra mariadb-libs 10.10.3-1
extra mobile-broadband-provider-info 20221107-2 [installed]
extra perl-dbd-mariadb 1.22-2
extra perl-file-readbackwards 1.06-3
community firefox-adblock-plus 3.16.1-1
community python-adb-shell 0.4.3-1
community python-adblock 0.6.0-1
2

Not impossible, but you didn’t clarify what you based your claim on.

3

Why do you believe this? The most current version of android-tools in Manjaro is 33.0.3-3

This is also the most current version available in the upstream Github Repo that is used as a source for adb in most Linux Distributions.

Google might releases its own version independently form this.

4

The package is called android-tools

pacman -Qi android-tools 

pacman -Ql android-tools
5

the lineageOS wiki recommends to download from google. and that is the …

Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.41
Version 34.0.0-9570255
Installed as /opt/platform-tools/adb

… version of it.

6

A package and an application it provides may not share the same name. Look from the file instead.

pacman -Qo /usr/bin/adb
7

spot on an exactly the kind of information I was looking for. adb is owned by android-tools.

8

And you can use it if you want, but this is not the version you can install from the repository.

Version 34 is not even in the AUR.
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/android-sdk-platform-tools

9
10

true, that is 33.0.xxx. Would you recommend to use the 33 Version, over the most recent? Maybe it’s a question of whoms (LineageOS vs Manjaro) recommendation to follow.

11

If you want the latest, you can follow these instructions and copy adb and fastboot to your $PATH; i.e, in ~/.local/bin/:

How to set up ADB on Linux

  1. Download the Android SDK Platform Tools ZIP file for Linux.
  2. Extract the ZIP to an easily-accessible location (like the Desktop for example).
  3. Open a Terminal window.
  4. Enter the following command: cd /path/to/extracted/folder/
  5. This will change the directory to where you extracted the ADB files.
  • Example: cd /Users/Doug/Desktop/platform-tools/
  1. Connect your device to your Linux machine with your USB cable. Change the connection mode to “file transfer (MTP)” mode. This is not always necessary for every device, but it’s recommended so you don’t run into any issues.
  2. Once the Terminal is in the same folder your ADB tools are in, you can execute the following command to launch the ADB daemon: ./adb devices
  3. Back on your smartphone or tablet device, you’ll see a prompt asking you to allow USB debugging. Go ahead and grant it.

– https://www.xda-developers.com/install-adb-windows-macos-linux/#how-to-set-up-adb

12

Since 34 is very new and is released with the beta of Android 14, I would not use it just yet. Of course if you plan to install Android 14, I would use it. But for 13 over less, it doesn’t really matter if you use 33 or 34.

13

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