How can VCS packages be out of date at all?
Client machines will only update a VCS package if: 1. The package maintainer updates a VCS package and gives it a newer version number than what is installed on a user's machine, and a user updates their packages. 2. The user explicitly requests that all VCS packages be updated. 3. The user explicitly re-installs a VCS package. The second only occurs if the user is using a package management tool that supports explicit upgrades of VCS packages, such as yaourt: [1] yaourt -Su --devel Pacman does not support such a VCS-specific upgrade option. Neither do many other package managers, such as pacaur (which I use). The third only occurs if users are following the development of upstream packages and manually decide to try out something new. [2] This is all to the best of my knowledge. I am unable to find relevant information that supports or denies my understanding either in the man pages for pacman [3] or pkgbuild [4]. Instead, I've simply drawn from my experiences maintaining packages and reading discussions here. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt#Examples [2] https://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/aur-general/2014-June/029021.html [3] https://www.archlinux.org/pacman/pacman.8.html [4] https://www.archlinux.org/pacman/PKGBUILD.5.html — Jeremy "Ichimonji10" Audet