pacu (Parch / Pacman Utilities)

A fast, lightweight, and robust C utility suite designed for Parch Linux (and Arch Linux derivatives). Inspired by Debian/Ubuntu's apt utilities, apt-mark, and Fedora's dnf, powered natively by libalpm and modern POSIX C.

Quick Start

You can invoke commands using pacu or the ultra-short alias pu:

# Safely edit repository sources in $EDITOR with syntax validation
pacu edit-sources

# Manage repositories
pacu repo list
pacu repo enable testing
pacu repo add myrepo --server https://example.com/repo/$arch

# Package hold / version lock (apt-mark hold equivalent)
pacu hold linux nvidia
pacu show-held
pacu unhold linux

# Explain why a package is installed
pacu why libtermkey

# View dependency tree
pacu deptree neovim

# Diagnose system health
pacu doctor

# Clean cache and remove unneeded orphans
pacu cache status
pacu cache clean --keep 2
pacu autoremove

# Check updates safely without db locks
pacu check-updates

Available Subcommands

Subcommand	Alias Shortcut	Description
edit-sources	pacedit	Safely edit /etc/pacman.conf and mirrorlists with atomic backup and validation
repo	pacrepo	Repository manager (list, add, remove, enable, disable)
hold / unhold / show-held		Hold and unhold packages to manage IgnorePkg
mark		Change install reasons (as-explicit / as-dep)
autoremove	pacorphans	Find and clean unneeded dependency orphan trees
cache	pacclean	Inspect cache disk usage, retain N versions, clean uninstalled
check-updates		Non-locking update checking in a temporary sandbox
why	pacwhy	Trace why an installed package is present
deptree		Render Unicode / ASCII dependency trees (with -r reverse mode)
search-file		Locate which package owns a specific file or binary
history		Inspect formatted /var/log/pacman.log transaction history
top-sizes		List installed packages sorted by disk footprint
doctor	pacdoctor	Full system health check (locks, broken DBs, keyring, .pacnew files)
verify		Check file integrity and missing files against ALPM databases
diff		Find and interactively merge .pacnew and .pacsave files
rank-mirrors		Benchmark and rank mirror speeds via concurrent C HTTP/HTTPS requests
keys		Repair and manage pacman GPG keyring (fix, refresh, reset)
news		Fetch distribution announcements and critical update alerts

Build & Installation

Requirements

• meson
• ninja
• gcc or clang
• libalpm
• libcurl

Build

meson setup build
ninja -C build

Test

ninja -C build test

Install

sudo ninja -C build install

This installs pacu along with symlinks: pu, pacman-utils, pacedit, pacrepo, pacdoctor, pacwhy, pacclean, and pacorphans.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later