I have a somewhat unreliable internet connection, and have limited space for my / partition, so I like to run pamac upgrade --download-only at a time when I’m sure the connection is stable.
When the full list of upgradable packages from various repositories is returned, I’m only given the option Apply transaction ? [y/N]. There’s apparently no way to select which packages I would like to upgrade and which I’d like to hold back (for e.g. size considerations) – I’m thinking about something along the lines of listing the packages by number, similar to yay when it asks for Packages to cleanBuild?.
If I use the GUI for pamac, I have the option of manually checking/unchecking a box for individual packages and libraries, which marks/unmarks them for the upgrade. Is there an way to do the equivalent in the CLI?
Partial updates are not supported and will — with emphasis — lead to breakage. Perhaps not immediately, but certainly in the very near future.
Manjaro is a rolling-release distribution and must be kept up to date. If this is not convenient for you, then you should consider switching to a fixed-point-release distribution instead.
Yes, I understand that. But there are some packages which aren’t system dependencies etc., like the R programming language or signal-desktop. If they break after I update everything else (as I’ve done via the GUI) I can simply update R again to resume using it.
And btw, if a rolling-release distro were really serious about preventing breakage via partial upgrades, they wouldn’t put a big clickable checkbox next to the upgrades in the preferred package manager:
UNIX systems use shared libraries, and a bad update to a single package may break a lot more than just that package. Likewise, even application software relies on specific library versions — because that’s what the software has been compiled against — and it is not uncommon for certain software to break if the shared libraries were updated while the application was not. This is not always the case, but it can and does happen.
If you want completely system-independent packages, then you should consider using Snap, FlatPak or an AppImage. But be advised that those consume even far more space on your drive than their system-integrated counterparts.
Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for skipping an update to a particular package, such as when the updated package appears to have a serious flaw in it that could jeopardize the proper working of the system. We then immediately push out a fix, but due to the mirrors not always being in sync, it can then take some time before the package with the fix reaches you.
Masking packages or only selectively updating the system is only to be done by experienced users, and at their own responsibility. If you opt to either not update your system or render your system in a state of partial upgrade, then we will not offer any support for whatever difficulties you will have created for yourself.
Arch-based distributions offer great power, but with great power comes great responsibility. And that responsibility is yours to bear.
