[pacman-dev] Running pacman with at(1).

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi,

Due to bandwidth charges varying depending on the time of day, I've used
at(1) in the past to `pacman -S' when I'm AFK.  My recollection is
something like this is sufficient; a `pacman -Syuw --noconfirm' will
have run a little beforehand.

    sudo -i at '04:45 tomorrow' <<<'pacman -Sw foo...'

But that didn't work last night; it gave similar output to running in a
TTY with EOF on stdin.

    $ sudo -i pacman -Sw dbeaver </dev/null
    resolving dependencies...
    :: There are 3 providers available for java-runtime>=8:
    :: Repository extra
       1) jre-openjdk  2) jre10-openjdk  3) jre8-openjdk

    Enter a number (default=1): 
    Package (5)                 New Version  Net Change  Download Size

    extra/java-runtime-common   3-1            0.01 MiB               
    extra/jre-openjdk           11.0.3.u4-1    0.52 MiB       0.17 MiB
    extra/jre-openjdk-headless  11.0.3.u4-1  156.57 MiB      29.18 MiB
    extra/libnet                1.1.6-3        0.34 MiB               
    community/dbeaver           6.0.1-1       62.90 MiB      54.53 MiB

    Total Download Size:  83.88 MiB

    :: Proceed with download? [Y/n] $

Notice how the first prompt, that defaults to `1', seemed not to mind
EOF and went with that default.  The second prompt, to proceed with the
download, also has a default, `Y', but EOF that time halts pacman.
That seems inconsistent.

Skipping the first prompt doesn't bless the second one with the first's
behaviour of continuing.

    $ sudo -i pacman -Sw libnet </dev/null
    resolving dependencies...

    Package (1)   New Version  Net Change  Download Size

    extra/libnet  1.1.6-3        0.34 MiB       0.09 MiB

    Total Download Size:  0.09 MiB

    :: Proceed with download? [Y/n] $
    $ echo $?
    1
    $

Has this behaviour changed in the last few months?  Or quite possibly my
recollection is wrong.

pacman(1) has

    --noconfirm
        Bypass any and all “Are you sure?” messages.  It’s not a good
        idea to do this unless you want to run pacman from a script.

Given the first prompt isn't a simple binary choice of confirmation, the
man page could do with being a bit more explicit, perhaps

    The prompt is still displayed, but the default choice is always
    taken.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.