PACCACHE(8)

📦 version 1.13.1, in arch rolling

🌸 PACCACHE(8) — the pacman-contrib manual, bestie edition 🎀

okay so real talk: paccache is a flexible pacman cache cleaning utility and honestly? she's that girl. welcome to the glow-up of the manpage for paccache(8), straight out of the pacman-contrib crew. let's get into it ✨

📖 NAME

paccache — flexible pacman cache cleaning utility 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS

paccache <operation> [options] [target ...]

💖 DESCRIPTION

so basically, paccache removes old packages from the pacman cache directory. that's the whole vibe. and by default? the last three versions of a package are kept, no cap. she's generous like that 🫶

🔥 OPERATIONS

pick one bestie, this is the main character decision:

  • -d, --dryrun — does a dry run, so she's only finding candidate packages. no deleting, no moving, just vibes and intel 👀
  • -m, --move <dir> — moves candidate packages out of the cache directory and into dir 📦
  • -r, --remove — actually removes candidate packages from the cache directory. gone. periodt 💀

💅 OPTIONS

the full menu, none skipped, we don't do that here:

  • -a, --arch <arch> — scan for packages of one specific architecture. default is to scan for all architectures 🌈
  • -c, --cachedir <dir> — point her at a different cache directory. you can use this option more than once, she doesn't mind. default is to use the cache directory configured in pacman.conf 🗂️
  • -f, --force — applies force to mv and rm operations. she's not playing around anymore 🔥
  • -h, --help — displays syntax and command-line options, for when you need the lore 🧚
  • -i, --ignore <pkgs> — packages to ignore, comma-separated. alternatively - can be used to read the package names from stdin, newline-delimited 🚫
  • -k, --keep <num> — how many versions of each package get kept in the cache directory. default is 3 👑
  • --min-atime <time>, --min-mtime <time> — keeps packages whose atime/mtime isn't older than the time given, even if that means keeping more than what --keep specified. accepts arguments according to info "Date input formats", e.g. 30 days ago ⏰
  • --nocolor — do not colorize output. (sad but valid, respect her choices) 🙈
  • -z, --null — uses null delimiters for candidate names (only with -v and -vv) 🫧
  • -q, --quiet — minimizes the output. she's being mysterious 🤫
  • -u, --uninstalled — targets uninstalled packages 🕵️
  • -v, --verbose — increases verbosity, and you can specify it up to 3 times. the more the merrier fr fr 📢
  • -V, --version — displays version information ⭐

⏱️ SYSTEMD TIMER

the package cache can be cleaned periodically using the systemd timer paccache.timer. if the timer is enabled, the cache gets cleaned weekly using paccache's default options. set it and forget it, iconic behavior 💜

👀 SEE ALSO

pacman(8), pacman.conf(5), systemctl(1)

💀 BUGS

bugs? you must be kidding; there are no bugs in this software. 💅

but if we happen to be wrong (😭), file an issue with as much detail as possible at https://gitlab.archlinux.org/pacman/pacman-contrib/-/issues/new.

🌟 AUTHORS

current maintainers, the ones holding it down:

  • Johannes Löthberg <johannes@kyriasis.com>
  • Daniel M. Capella <polyzen@archlinux.org>

for additional contributors, use git shortlog -s on the pacman-contrib.git repository 🫶

and that's the tea, bestie 💖 this page is from Pacman-contrib 1.13.1, dated 2025-12-11 — go forth and clean that cache responsibly, mwah 🎀✨

📦 where this page comes from