repo-remove8
Package database maintenance utility
Part of repo-add(8).
Usage
repo-add [options]
<path-to-db>
<package>
[<package> ...]
repo-remove [options]
<path-to-db>
<packagename>
[<packagename> ...]
Overview
repo-add and repo-remove are two scripts to help build a package database for packages built with makepkg(8) and installed with pacman(8).
repo-add will update a package database by reading a built package file. Multiple packages to add can be specified on the command line.
If a matching “.sig” file is found alongside a package file, the signature will automatically be embedded into the database.
repo-remove will update a package database by removing the package name specified on the command line. Multiple packages to remove can be specified on the command line.
A package database is a tar file, optionally compressed. Valid extensions are “.db” followed by an archive extension of “.tar”, “.tar.bz2”, “.tar.gz”, “.tar.lrz”, “.tar.lz”, “.tar.lz4”, “.tar.lzo”, “.tar.xz”, “.tar.zst” or “.tar.Z”. The file does not need to exist, but all parent directories must exist.
Options
-
-q, --quiet -
Force this program to keep quiet and run silently except for warning and error messages.
-
-s, --sign -
Generate a PGP signature file using GnuPG. This will execute gpg --detach-sign on the generated database to generate a detached signature file, using the GPG agent if it is available. The signature file will be the entire filename of the database with a “.sig” extension.
-
-k, --key <key> -
Specify a key to use when signing packages. Can also be specified using the GPGKEY environment variable. If not specified in either location, the default key from the keyring will be used.
-
-v, --verify -
Verify the PGP signature of the database before updating the database. If the signature is invalid, an error is produced and the update does not proceed.
-
--nocolor -
Remove color from repo-add and repo-remove output.
-
-R, --remove -
Remove old package files from the disk when updating or removing their entry in the database.
-
-w, --wait-for-lock -
Wait for the lock file to be acquired. If unset, command will fail with exit code 2 if acquiring the lock fails. If set, it will retry to acquire lock until success.
Options
-
-n, --new -
Only add packages that are not already in the database. Warnings will be printed upon detection of existing packages, but they will not be re-added.
-
-p, --prevent-downgrade -
Do not add package to database if a newer version is already present
-
--include-sigs -
Include package PGP signatures in the repository database (if available)
Examples
repo-add foo.db.tar.xz <pkg1> [<pkg2> ...]
This creates two separate databases; a smaller database “foo.db.tar.xz” used by pacman and a large database containing package file lists “foo.files.tar.xz” for use by other utilities. While pacman can use the large database (if renamed with a db.tar* extension), there is currently no additional benefit for the larger download.
History
- Arch Linux 2026-11-01: the text shown here
- Debian 13 (Trixie)
- Debian 12 (Bookworm)
--include-sigs since Debian 13 (Trixie);
--prevent-downgrade since Arch Linux 2026-11-01;
--wait-for-lock since Arch Linux 2026-11-01;
-p since Arch Linux 2026-11-01;
-w since Arch Linux 2026-11-01.