[arch-general] Why couldn't pacman resolve the dependency?

[Rodrigo Rivas]

On Sun, Jun 28, 2015 at 5:52 PM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf at rocketmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the problem could be solved by installing the problematic dependency
> first, but why couldn't pacman -Syu not resolve the dependency?
>
> This is what happened:
>
> [long snip]

I think that what happened is that pacman only installs new packages
to solve *new* dependencies.

That is, if the unsatisfied dependency is an existing one, made for
example by removing a package with -Rd, then it will complain about
the broken dependency but it will not install the package
automatically.
However, if the dependency arises because a new version of a package
requires it (not requiring it before), then it will fix the dependency
by adding that package.

Just guessing, but I think that is the case. You can easily check if
I'm right with:

 # pacman -Rd perl-package-constants
 # pacman -Su

-- 
Rodrigo