[arch-general] Location of the pacman database

[Neven Sajko]

> Moving the pacman DB is one step to make such a setup a bit more easy
> to create and It does
> not effect the traditional use case at all.

That's why I suggested putting it in a separate bugreport;
it gets accepted more easily, and then less change is needed for 41863.

On 14 September 2014 11:41, Tobias Hunger <tobias.hunger at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Leonid Isaev <lisaev at umail.iu.edu> wrote:
>> Yeah, that's what the 1st response in the bug report basically said: pacman DB
>> location is a cosmetic detail.
>
> No, it is not: /var will be wiped, so having the pacman DB there is
> not a good idea.
>
>> Also, note that systemd features like factory reset and/or atomic updates make
>> no sense in the context of a rolling-release distro like Arch (or any
>> distribution for that matter), so I doubt that they can be a sufficient
>> motivation for this DB move...
>
> I completely disagree:
>
> Factory reset is great, especially for a distro involving a lot of
> manual tweaking like arch:-)
> With factory reset you always know how to undo your own changes,
> getting back to the
> default state. That works for either all changes ever done to the
> system (factory reset) or
> selectively by just removing the configuration files you tweaked last.
>
> So factory reset is nice, but the image based installation is the best
> thing since sliced bread.
> I do that for a couple of month now (using ostree, not the new systemd
> way). It is a game
> changer.
>
> Basically I create new images of *all* my machines (physical machines,
> VMs and docker
> images) each night. That is really easy to do with arch's pacstrap and
> a bit of configuration
> that gets applied on top (and moving a couple of files around, e.g.
> the pacman DB;-).
> I then store the store the physical machine images in ostree (I am
> currently changing
> that to the subvolume approach systemd recently suggested).
>
> Now I can test the my new arch snapshot in the new image by either
> using systemd-nspawn
> or by starting it in a VM. I can also just reboot into the new
> image... if it breaks, the old, working
> image is just another reboot away.
>
> Moving the pacman DB is one step to make such a setup a bit more easy
> to create and It does
> not effect the traditional use case at all. You can even put the
> pacman db into e.g.
> /usr/lib/pacman/db for new installations and fall back to the current
> location in /var if there
> is no DB there.
>
> Best Regards,
> Tobias