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Dry run with pacman package manager

Source: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman
pacman: Package manager for Arch Linux

-p flag can be used with pacman to dry run commands — that is, see what your command is going to do before it actually does anything.

Might not work with certain flag combinations like -n, and it will simply throw an error.



Flags used in the command -

  • R: --remove - removes the specified package.
  • s: --recursive - removes the package and its dependencies that are no longer required by any other installed package.
  • n: --nosave - removes the package’s configuration files as well.


Optional explanation with simple examples -

pacman -Rns : To remove a package and its dependencies, along with the package’s config files which are not required by any other installed package.


1. Normal Behavior -

pacman -Rs command usage


2. -p flag works well and shows a list of the final packages which will be removed. It only shows what Pacman -Rs is going to do instead of asking for deletion confirmation to proceed further. -

pacman -p command usage along with -Rs flags, and everything works well


3. -p doesn’t work when used with -n flag -

pacman -p command usage along with -n flag which returns an error



Hope you like it.

🦖