Hi, pacman has an option --asdeps so the user can install packages as if it were deps. In fact, such packages will be treated exactly the same as normal dependencies: - if no explicit package depends on them, they will be considered orphans and are subject to be cleaned up, along with 'real' orphans. This can be a good thing when the user installs the packages --asdeps assuming a package will state them as dep later on. if doesn't happen it can really be considered an orphan and can be deleted. This can be a bad thing when the user installs the packages --asdeps because no package states the dependencies on them, but they are needed/wanted for some reason. (Often this means the "dependent" package misses a dependency and this package should be fixed, but not always) - in a backup/restore or clone system scenario the usual approach is to do 'pacman -Qe' to get a package list. When restoring/installing the list on another box this means we install only the explicit packages and their dependencies. Some packages we installed ourself --asdeps will get lost. This is not always good. A current workaround would be to install these packages explicitly, but doesn't always feel right either because we don't want the package explictly, although we do want them because they provide features to a package even though it's not really needed. In fact, this is very similar to the 'recommends' directive in debian package. Many arch packages literally say 'install x to have feature foo, install y to have feature bar' (these are the 'recommended' packages). If the user then installs x or y they are not really explicit packages (because we only want them because we use another package that recommends them), but they are not dependencies either (otherwise they will get lost) What I propose is an intermediate state between 'explicit' and 'dependency', called 'explicit dependency'. This would be the new default way when the user wants to install something as a dep (usually because a package recommended it), whereas the 'old' '--asdeps' installs a package as a 'real' dependency (eg: do this only when you're sure you'll install a package that depends on them, otherwise the package will be an orphan and get cleaned up someday or not be restored when restoring/cloning a system) What are your ideas? Thanks, Dieter