Good to know, thanks!
Something that I don’t think was mentioned above - you CAN install without updating (just pacman -S pkgname) - OR you can update everything and install at the same time (pacman -Syu pkgname) - just don’t go halfway by updating the database, then installing without running the u part!
But package list should be updated before installing software else that could create problems if local and remote package list are not in sync. Ain’t this correct?
The package list would be ‘in sync’ with the current state of your machine, and any packages installed would be using that info for which version to install. This avoids the problems of ‘mixed status’ or partial updates. If a newer package version exists, it will be updated in sync with the NEW database with the rest when you run a normal update.
At least this means you don’t HAVE to update before an install you need when an update might conflict with your available time!
BTW, I am one of those who updates 1+ times a day on most of my systems (OCD?) - but on others I go weekly or so, without problems. On my mirror server, I go weekly but only to the prior week’s date to give me time to know there were no oddities in the update before commiting them to a server!
Hope this clarifies a bit…
When running Arch, I update once in the morning when I first get to my computer and reboot if necessary. Then I do not update until the next morning. I barely notice the time for the reboot since I have not yet begun using the computer.
Thanks for clarifying, that’s great! I generally try to avoid updating during busy work time, but rarely if at all had trouble with eos/arch based distros on updates.
The problem is that if the package you are trying to install has updated, you will get 404 errors when you try to install it.
You can avoid this by using downgrade to install the matching version or manually pulling it from the archive.