[pacman-dev] "pacman --arch=i686 -Syu" results in "error: GPGME error: No data"

[stratus at tuta.io]

# pacman --arch=i686 -Syu
This is clearly not a sensible command, but trying it just to see what happened when using the --arch option out resulted in database corruption, then it was impossible to upgrade and pacman would not function:
error: GPGME error: No data
error: failed to synchronize all databases (unexpected error)
until I did:
# rm /var/lib/pacman/sync/*
# pacman-key --init
# pacman-key --populate archlinux artix
# pacman -Syy
I tried it again and it did the same thing, and thought you might be interested.