Difference vulkan-mesa-device-select and extra/vulkan-mesa-implicit-layers?

General system Newbie
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This morning I updated my system and I got this:

Replace vulkan-mesa-device-select with extra/vulkan-mesa-implicit-layers? [Y/n]

I had no idea to be honest what it is but still accepted (that behaviour makes the system vulnerable of course). At the Arch forum a user thinks it’s just a name change.

Is there anyone here who can give more info on it?

I suppose it’s more than a name change as I experienced positive effects. I need to test longer to be sure, but so far it seems to have solved very frequent (once every hour or so) desktop effects resets I’ve been experiencing since slightly more than a week before this update (and a previous update already lowered impact as I didn’t need to reboot anymore). Since the update this morning, no desktop effects reset has been taking place while it has been so frequent that it should’ve happened at least once.

Btw, I never understood the complaints about Wayland as I don’t experience any adverse effects. These desktop effects resets, are these an example of what Wayland does that people complain about?

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These implicit layers automatically provide debugging, validation, and performance monitoring tools (like vkBasalt or MangoHud when configured) by hooking into the Vulkan loader, making them available for applications that expect them without manual setup.

The packages place files in standard system directories (like /usr/share/vulkan/implicit_layer.d/), allowing the Vulkan loader to find and load them automatically when needed.

Edit:

vulkan-mesa-device-select is a specific functionality (device selection) implemented as a Vulkan layer.

extra/vulkan-mesa-implicit-layers is a collection or package that contains various Mesa-provided implicit Vulkan layers, which may include the device selection layer among others.

Edit: I think it’s more than just a name change.

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Looking at the PKGBUILD history it’s mostly a name-change for that sub-package.

That particular change was part of the big update from mesa 25.2 to 25.3, which is probably responsible for fixing the graphic related issues you observed.

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Also was wondering about the message I got. I got 2 mesa packages that were updated and renamed like this. Can’t remember the names. Thanks for explanation. :+1: