pkgfile automatic update

by Simon Marchi on 1 August 2024

I'm an avid user of pkgfile, to quickly find which package on Arch Linux provides a given file. I sometimes get bitten by the fact that my pkgfile database is out-of-date.

I discovered today (because I saw the word pkgfiled pass by in an update) that it's possible to automatically keep it up-to-date:

systemctl enable pkgfile-update.timer
timer that updates the database daily
systemctl enable pkgfiled.service
service that watches pacman's list files (in /var/lib/pacman/sync), and updates pkgfile's database whenever pacman's database changes