pacman – Manage packages with pacman

Synopsis

  • Manage packages with the pacman package manager, which is used by Arch Linux and its variants.

Parameters

Parameter Choices/Defaults Comments
force
boolean
added in 2.0
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
When removing package - force remove package, without any checks. When update_cache - force redownload repo databases.
name
-
Name or list of names of the packages to install, upgrade, or remove.

aliases: package, pkg
recurse
boolean
added in 1.3
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
When removing a package, also remove its dependencies, provided that they are not required by other packages and were not explicitly installed by a user.
state
-
    Choices:
  • absent
  • latest
  • present ←
Desired state of the package.
update_cache
boolean
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Whether or not to refresh the master package lists. This can be run as part of a package installation or as a separate step.

aliases: update-cache
upgrade
boolean
added in 2.0
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Whether or not to upgrade whole system.

Notes

Note

  • When used with a loop: each package will be processed individually, it is much more efficient to pass the list directly to the name option.

Examples

- name: Install package foo
  pacman:
    name: foo
    state: present

- name: Upgrade package foo
  pacman:
    name: foo
    state: latest
    update_cache: yes

- name: Remove packages foo and bar
  pacman:
    name: foo,bar
    state: absent

- name: Recursively remove package baz
  pacman:
    name: baz
    state: absent
    recurse: yes

- name: Run the equivalent of "pacman -Sy" as a separate step
  pacman:
    update_cache: yes

- name: Run the equivalent of "pacman -Su" as a separate step
  pacman:
    upgrade: yes

- name: Run the equivalent of "pacman -Syu" as a separate step
  pacman:
    update_cache: yes
    upgrade: yes

- name: Run the equivalent of "pacman -Rdd", force remove package baz
  pacman:
    name: baz
    state: absent
    force: yes

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key Returned Description
packages
list
 when upgrade is set to yes
a list of packages that have been changed

Sample:
['package', 'other-package']


Status

Authors

  • Indrajit Raychaudhuri (@indrajitr)
  • Aaron Bull Schaefer (@elasticdog) <aaron@elasticdog.com>
  • Afterburn

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