Arch Linux Nears Roll-Out Of Zstd Compressed Packages For Faster Pacman Installs

[Grogan]

By the way, there's no hocus pocus with the package cache. It's just packages in a directory (i.e. not indexed in databases or anything) that are read if you use one of those rollback utilities.

A simple "rm -f /var/cache/pacman/pkg/*" works too.

[holunder]

Huh?

Clearing cache on each reboot kinda defeats the purpose of having a cache, doesn't it?

Exactly, I don’t need a cache, I don’t want a cache unnecessary writing to my SSD and using space. If I really need an older package, I can still use the utility "downgrade" to get it.

[horstderheld]

paccache in the package pacman-contrib cleans the cache, keeping the last 3 by default. It comes with paccache.timer to run weekly. This is all in the pacman wiki page.

Or:
Tip: You can create #Hooks to run this automatically after every pacman transaction, see examples. [source: arch wiki page]

[discordian]

I was about to make that comment...
APT is just too slow and takes forever. pacman is incredibly fast when installing and just does the right thing.
It only takes a while when first doing pacman -S (15 seconds or so) but subsequent operations are quick.

APT does call fsync an absurd amount of times, so updates are more reliable (pretty useless if you have a filesystem with snapshots). try installing "eatmydata" and run apt through it, this tool transparently nulls those calls.

[starshipeleven]

"You have had a year, so we expect you already did update. Hurry up if you have not."

The double-edged sword of KISS attitude. I actually admire Arch for this.

the requirement to track latest releases is tangential to KISS attitude.

[starshipeleven]

Guys, we got it, you can clear pacman's package cache.

[starshipeleven]

APT is just too slow and takes forever.

That's completely irrelevant for any intent and purpose.

Apt's main issue is not accidentally resolving dependencies VERY wrong and deleting system-critical applications.

[tildearrow]

APT does call fsync an absurd amount of times, so updates are more reliable (pretty useless if you have a filesystem with snapshots). try installing "eatmydata" and run apt through it, this tool transparently nulls those calls.

Why not call fsync at the end of the installation instead?

[tildearrow]

Apt's main issue is not accidentally resolving dependencies VERY wrong and deleting system-critical applications.

I agree. I came across this issue a few times.

Here is my old rant on it:

- You can't install local packages with APT. You have to use dpkg, which doesn't do any sort of dependency resolution. The next statement describes one problem arising from this fact.
- The package manager basically tells you that you can't screw up once. When you install a broken package (e.g. missing dependencies), your package manager places the package in a "to-install" list, but since the package is broken, you can't install ANYTHING unless you "fix" the system, and sometimes doing that can result in the package manager wiping the whole system (this occurred to me once... I was installing some packages from KXStudio and at one point I almost deleted like 1000+ packages due to a simple break). pacman is superior in this regard. Not only you're able to install local packages within the package manager, but also it doesn't break. If you try to install a broken package, pacman just stops and doesn't screw up. No need to cleanup or anything like that.
- Creating packages... is a headache. Under Arch Linux all you have to do is create a PKGBUILD, type makepkg, and boom, your package's baked. However, under Debian, you have to create like a hundred files (like a changelog, a set of rules, package details, licenses, patches, manpages, files to install (IS THIS EVEN NECESSARY?!), library symbols (what the HELL), etc.), use a thousand tools, and then you finally have a package. It's like autotools vs. CMake/Meson. Autotools requires you to write like 10 files and run like 20 commands to get a Makefile. CMake/Meson? You just write 1 file, create a build dir, type cmake .. or meson .. and done, Makefile get!

[archkde]

I agree. I came across this issue a few times.

Here is my old rant on it:

APT can install local packages without any problems. You just give it the path as package name. It also asks before wiping your system, in which case you cancel and give it a hint with package_name+ to keep that package (and the resolver is much better now). For the boilerplate files, I mostly agree, though you can mostly copy them from a minimal template and get away with changes to changelog (only the package name), control (name, dependencies and upstream info if you want it correctly), copyright if you want it correctly, and at most rules.