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Topic: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command? (Read 1503 times) previous topic - next topic
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Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Because everytime i update something breaks and now im done updating.

Re: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Reply #1 –
Arch, by design, is not stable. Its considered bleeding edge. When you run bleeding edge, things break.
One thing you can think about - how often do you update?

Once a month, every few months, daily? These can play a roll in what you can/will see.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Re: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: hedron – on
Because everytime i update something breaks and now im done updating.
Put the following lines on top of your /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. In case of emergency, uncomment, adjust date to a known stable state and run pacman -Syyuu. I also highly recommend you have pacman-static installed.
Code: [Select]
#Server=https://archive2.artixlinux.org/repos/2025/07/30/$repo/os/$arch
#Server=https://archive.artixlinux.org/repos/2025/07/30/$repo/os/$arch

This works exactly as described in the Arch wiki page. See? A little RTFM goes a long way...

Re: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Reply #3 –
I get very few problems on updates, it's far less common than in the earlier days of Artix, so things are constantly improving. My strategy is to update frequently, often daily or at least weekly, using the stable repos - check if you have any gremlins or testing repos enabled in your /etc/pacman.conf, because you shouldn't have if you want a reliable system. This way only a few packages get upgraded at one time so it's easy to downgrade and find which are causing the problem. Also I have more than one machine running Artix, so I upgrade one, reboot and check it works online, shut it down again, and if it's all OK, upgrade the others. This isn't a 100% guarantee due to different hardware and software on the others, but it's a pretty good indicator most of the time. Is there a particular package that causes you problems? If there is, then please provide more details, it might be the case it needs a tweak to the PKGBUILD to tie it in with the correct dependency versions or something like that. There are more ways to ensure reliability too, backups and snapshots for example. But I have always found /var/log/pacman.log and /var/cache/pacman/pkg to be sufficient, accessed from a chroot in the worst (extremely rare) cases! I also use OpenRC which is one of the more stable and reliable inits.

Re: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Reply #4 –
I would recommend installing pacman-static to get around any breakages that render pacman useless for the time being. It's something I wish I knew on my first go with Artix, but you live and you learn.

Re: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: cds – on

Once a month, every few months, daily? These can play a roll in what you can/will see.
Once every six months or so.

Ok, it's bleeding edge, but you'd think there'd be a once a year or biennial (whatever the word for two years is) stable update where you wouldn't have to spend countless hours and make multiple threads (wasting other people's time) trying to figure out how to fix everything that broke.

I'll check out pacman-static.  Thanks.

Re: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: hedron – on
Because everytime i update something breaks and now im done updating.
Quote from: hedron – on
This issue has come up time and time again.  I'm trying to update a program on my computer, which I know exists, but for some reason pacman doesn't know it's there.  Pacman probably recognizes it as a part of a set or different name completely, and I'm tired of searching the web for hours everytime this happens.

What have you been doing for the past FIVE YEARS?

You're not wasting my time, you're wasting yours.
"Wer alles kann, macht nichts richtig"

Artix USE="runit openrc slim openbox lxde gtk2 qt4 qt5 qt6 conky
-gtk3 -gtk4 -adwaita{cursors,themes,icons,fonts} -gnome3 -kde -plasma -wayland "

Re: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Reply #8 –
It is not debian, there is no stable branch.  Stable on debian usually means, FWIW, outdated.

I commonly have troubles with updates, especially on Sunday night for some reason.  With a little patience, things generally resolve by the next day, and if not I post or check on irc.  I have never had a situation, such as I have have with umbuntu AND suse AND fedora, where the system is either not upgradable ***at all***, which really sucks and then requires a complete rebuild, or the system totally breaks on the update requiring a rebuild just as the path of least resistance.

If I felt as you do, I would find a stable configuration and not update... and wash my hands of the problem.  Most new software sucks anyway... see the gimp for example.  That is effectually what a stable branch is anyway...minus some security patches.

There is no perfect computer system.  I have WIndows 98 working in the office on an old Pentium II .  That is stable.

Reuvain

Re: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Reply #9 –
Sometimes if I get breakage after an update I fix it straight away.

But if I can't be arsed, or I'm struggling to, I just rsync last nights incremental backup over the rootfs.
To me this is key:
Have some way to revert an update. There are a few ways but I choose rsnapshot along with rsnapshot-timestamp.
 

Re: Is there a pacman -update-to-stable command?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: hedron – on
Quote from: cds – on

Once a month, every few months, daily? These can play a roll in what you can/will see.
Once every six months or so.


Well now, that's your problem... You might want to consider at the very, very least, once a month.
The more often, the better. I personally think once a week is good (albeit, I update daily) - YMMV.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious