It does it automatically.
But make sure to read the Arch news before every update, especially when it’s a lot of packages. Something big like a new KDE Release might require minor manual intervention.
I’ve literally only read the news the 1 or 2 times there was a breaking change during an update. Blindly updating (non-AUR) has served me fine for over 10 years
Well everyone’s milage may vary. I have set up informant some time ago so I’m forced to read the news on updates. But much more importantly I’ve ignored .pacnew files for years till it bit me in the ass when a Pam config file change broke my login so now I’m not ignoring.pacnew but merging them every update.
As the other commenter said I use a diff tool (I use vimdiff but meld probably works easiest if your not used to vim).
I do a pacdiff after every upgrade that will prompt you for all the changed files (most of the times there are none or the changes are minor) and let you compare your version and the .pacnew file. If anything changes in the syntax in a major way (which it almost never does) you will should spot these differences and be able to amend any changes you made in that way.
The example I gave was when some pam config file syntax changed and since I had a custom pam config (because of an encrypted home) it didn’t update the syntax (creating a pacnew file) then I couldn’t login after reboot.
I would recommend doing it manually - you can get a GUI diff tool (I like Meld), run it with both the normal file and pacnew, and merge every change from the pacnew into the main file.
It does it automatically.
But make sure to read the Arch news before every update, especially when it’s a lot of packages. Something big like a new KDE Release might require minor manual intervention.
I just update, never had an issue.
Just read the output of yay/pacman and you’ll be fine.
I’m more of an “update first, care later” type of person
And it works great, 100% recommended to newbies
Oh and make a separate home partition, just in case
No separate home needed, just save important files in your nextcloud server
The server runs arch too x)
Live fast and die young 🤘
I’ve literally only read the news the 1 or 2 times there was a breaking change during an update. Blindly updating (non-AUR) has served me fine for over 10 years
Well everyone’s milage may vary. I have set up informant some time ago so I’m forced to read the news on updates. But much more importantly I’ve ignored .pacnew files for years till it bit me in the ass when a Pam config file change broke my login so now I’m not ignoring.pacnew but merging them every update.
Oh… Ohno
How safe is merging them?
As the other commenter said I use a diff tool (I use vimdiff but meld probably works easiest if your not used to vim). I do a pacdiff after every upgrade that will prompt you for all the changed files (most of the times there are none or the changes are minor) and let you compare your version and the .pacnew file. If anything changes in the syntax in a major way (which it almost never does) you will should spot these differences and be able to amend any changes you made in that way.
The example I gave was when some pam config file syntax changed and since I had a custom pam config (because of an encrypted home) it didn’t update the syntax (creating a pacnew file) then I couldn’t login after reboot.
Thank you
I would recommend doing it manually - you can get a GUI diff tool (I like Meld), run it with both the normal file and pacnew, and merge every change from the pacnew into the main file.
I’ve been using topgrade as of late and was worried it would break my files. Have to check what it changes specifically.
Always when it prompt me, been ignoring it for now as one of the files is my rc files that gets changed.
Thank you