[arch-general] new arch user, questions about package management

[Abhishek Dasgupta]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 8:55 PM, Dave Heistand <dheistand at challiance.org> wrote:
> Such a diff would tell me things like (output
>
> Packages removed from package tree/ftp servers:
> firefox (installed)
> foobar (not installed)
>
> Packages added to tree/ftp servers
> iceweasel (not installed)
> tmpwatch (not installed)

Pacman stores all the repository data in
/var/lib/pacman/sync/{repository}

Also pacman has a feature of listing all the packages in a
particular repository:
pacman -Slq {repository}
The -q is for suppressing the version information. So, to check the
differences in say the core repository you could do:

$ pacman -Slq core > core-old.txt
# pacman -Sy
$ pacman -Slq core > core-new.txt
$ diff core-new.txt core-old.txt