How to use package from community-testing
Hi, I am running arch-linux with cyrus-imapd as mail server for several years and now cyrus-imapd appeared in community-testing. I am planning upgrade and switch from cyrus-imapd aur package to version from community-testing. What is a recommended way to test only this package? If I enable community-testing in pacman.conf, then doing pacman -Su will still pull official packages from community until I explicitly request a version from testing? Regards, Łukasz
Hello, Firstly cyrus-imapd should not be within the AUR as it is within the official repository. Secondly, you can not do partial upgrades like that, if you use community-testing all packages from community-testing should be used otherwise your system may break, read the following: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_uns... The reason why cyrus-imapd has not been moved into community yet is because it remains untested. I have seen it in testing for a month now but it seems none of the Arch Testing Team use cyrus-imapd and thus it never got tested. Hope this help! Have a good day, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
Hey Łukasz! :)
I am running arch-linux with cyrus-imapd as mail server for several years and now cyrus-imapd appeared in community-testing.
I am planning upgrade and switch from cyrus-imapd aur package to version from community-testing.
You can just continue using the AUR version until the package is actually moved to [community], so unless you want to help out testing the package there is no need to hurry switching to the one in [community-testing]. If however you want to help out by testing the new package you should read the wiki article[0] about the testing repositories, especially it is important that you also have to enable [testing] if you want to use [community-testing] because packages in [community-testing] link against libraries etc. from [testing] and you otherwise put your system in a state of being partially upgraded[1].
What is a recommended way to test only this package?
This is not something that is intended to work and is explicitly unsupported, as it has been pointed out in the other answer in this thread. The linked article[1] about partial upgrades provides some more insights on why that is.
If I enable community-testing in pacman.conf, then doing pacman -Su will still pull official packages from community until I explicitly request a version from testing?
The order in which repositories are placed in the pacman.conf is used to determine which version to take if there are two repositories offering the same package, see the following extract from pacman.conf(5):
The order of repositories in the configuration files matters; repositories listed first will take precedence over those listed later in the file when packages in two repositories have identical names, regardless of version number.
All the best, Chris [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Official_repositories#Testing_repositories [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_uns...
On 4/26/23 12:57, Christian Heusel wrote:
Hey Łukasz! :)
I am running arch-linux with cyrus-imapd as mail server for several years and now cyrus-imapd appeared in community-testing.
I am planning upgrade and switch from cyrus-imapd aur package to version from community-testing. You can just continue using the AUR version until the package is actually moved to [community], so unless you want to help out testing the package there is no need to hurry switching to the one in [community-testing].
If however you want to help out by testing the new package you should read the wiki article[0] about the testing repositories, especially it is important that you also have to enable [testing] if you want to use [community-testing] because packages in [community-testing] link against libraries etc. from [testing] and you otherwise put your system in a state of being partially upgraded[1].
Many thanks for your detailed explanations. This is my production machine, so it is safer to stick to AUR version and compile it myself for now instead of pulling packages from [testing] repository. Regards, Łukasz
On Wed, 2023-04-26 at 10:56 +0100, Polarian wrote:
Secondly, you can not do partial upgrades like that
Hi, that's not always correct. This month I downloaded embree from IIRC staging. In the past I did this with packages from testing, too. I downloaded the package and installed it with "pacman -U". The reason for this was, that there was a conflict by the official repositories. This partial upgrade fixed the conflict. Regards, Ralf
On Wed, 26 Apr 2023 16:58:36 +0200 Ralf Mardorf <ralf-mardorf@riseup.net> wrote:
On Wed, 2023-04-26 at 10:56 +0100, Polarian wrote:
Secondly, you can not do partial upgrades like that
Hi,
that's not always correct. This month I downloaded embree from IIRC staging. In the past I did this with packages from testing, too.
I downloaded the package and installed it with "pacman -U". The reason for this was, that there was a conflict by the official repositories. This partial upgrade fixed the conflict.
Regards, Ralf
You can do that, but you should *expect* things to break. Up to and including making your system unbootable. If you do something like that, you're on your own, Arch is not designed for it. But it's your system, do whatever you want. Doug
On Wed, 2023-04-26 at 10:03 -0500, Doug Newgard wrote:
On Wed, 26 Apr 2023 16:58:36 +0200 Ralf Mardorf <ralf-mardorf@riseup.net> wrote:
On Wed, 2023-04-26 at 10:56 +0100, Polarian wrote:
Secondly, you can not do partial upgrades like that
Hi,
that's not always correct. This month I downloaded embree from IIRC staging. In the past I did this with packages from testing, too.
I downloaded the package and installed it with "pacman -U". The reason for this was, that there was a conflict by the official repositories. This partial upgrade fixed the conflict.
Regards, Ralf
You can do that, but you should *expect* things to break. Up to and including making your system unbootable. If you do something like that, you're on your own, Arch is not designed for it. But it's your system, do whatever you want.
I should mention that in the case of embree this was done after #78188 was fixed and the fixed package was provided by staging. Installing this package couldn't break my system, because it was broken by a regular, supported update ;). Actually this package fixed a system that was broken by a regular, supported update. Something like this doesn't happen often, but from time to time it does happen.
Hello,
that's not always correct. This month I downloaded embree from IIRC staging. In the past I did this with packages from testing, too.
You should not be recommending the use of partial upgrades, it is unsupported and will most likely cause issues. That is one case in which the partial upgrade was useful, but this does not mean you should recommend it.
You can do that, but you should *expect* things to break. Up to and including making your system unbootable. If you do something like that, you're on your own, Arch is not designed for it. But it's your system, do whatever you want.
Well, you can do whatever you like, but if you complain about a "bug" because you did not follow the guidelines, then its a you problem and the arch staff will not help.
Something like this doesn't happen often, but from time to time it does happen.
Sometimes people win when they gamble, does that mean you should go around telling people to gamble all their money? no! The solution is not a partial upgrade, end of story! Have a good night, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
On Wed, 2023-04-26 at 23:21 +0100, Polarian wrote:
You should not be recommending the use of partial upgrade
Hi, I never recommended partial upgrades. I only mentioned that replacing a package from official repositories that does cause issues, with a package from staging or testing sometimes does fix a broken install instead of causing breakage. Regards, Ralf
On 4/26/23 12:57, Christian Heusel wrote:
Hey Łukasz! :)
You can just continue using the AUR version until the package is actually moved to [community], so unless you want to help out testing the package there is no need to hurry switching to the one in [community-testing].
I upgraded cyrus 3.6.0 from aur, currently it needs a patch for sphinx doc generation. Filled issue with patch here: https://github.com/cyrusimap/cyrus-imapd/issues/4491 Besides this, upgrade went ok. Regards, Łukasz
participants (5)
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Christian Heusel
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Doug Newgard
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Polarian
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Ralf Mardorf
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Łukasz Michalski