cddb_get 2.27-1 package contains the following directories : /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/ /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/ These 5.8.8 directories are normally symlinks to current/ on the filesystem. When removing this package, or upgrading it to 2.27-2, the following errors show up: error: cannot remove file 'usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/': Not a directory error: cannot remove file 'usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/': Not a directory That's related to commit b55abdce7 (also see 2898ccb) pacman now does a alpm_lstat of usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/, which does a lstat of usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8 , which gives a symlink. Then it tries to unlink(usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/), which results in the above error. I wonder if we shouldn't just revert to a simple lstat usage here.