We are introducing a change in JDK/JRE packages of our distro. This istriggered from the way a JRE is build in modern versions of Java (>9). We areintroducing this change in Java 21.

To sum it up instead of having JDK and JRE packages coexist in the same systemwe will be making them conflict. The JDK variant package includes the runtimeenvironment to execute Java applications so if one needs compilation andruntime of Java they need only the JDK package in the future. If, on the otherhand, they need just runtime of Java then JRE (or jre-headless) will work.

This will (potentially) require a manual user action during upgrade:

• if you have both JDK and JRE installed you can manually install the JDKwith pacman -Sy jdk-openjdk and this removes the JRE related packages.
• if you have both JRE and JRE-headless you will need to choose one ofthem and install it manually since they would conflict each other now.
• If you only have one of the JDK/JRE/JRE-headless pacman should resolvedependencies normally and no action is needed.

At the moment this is only valid for the upcoming JDK 21 release.

With shadow >= 4.14.0 , Arch Linux's default password hashing algorithm changed from SHA512 to yescrypt [1].

Furthermore, the umask [2] settings are now configured in /etc/login.defs instead of /etc/profile .

This should not require any manual intervention.

Reasons for Yescrypt

The password-based key derivation function (KDF) and password hashing scheme yescrypt has been chosen due to its adoption (readily available in libxcrypt , which is used by pam [3]) and its stronger resilience towards password cracking attempts over SHA512 .

Although the winner of the Password Hashing Competition [4] has been argon2 , this even more resilient algorithm is not yet available in libxcrypt [5][6].

Configuring yescrypt

The YESCRYPT_COST_FACTOR setting in /etc/login.defs is currently without effect, until pam implements reading its value [7]. If a YESCRYPT_COST_FACTOR higher (or lower) than the default ( 5 ) is needed, it can be set using the rounds option of the pam_unix [8] module (i.e. in /etc/pam.d/system-auth ).

General list of changes

• yescrypt is used as default password hashing algorithm, instead of SHA512
• pam honors the chosen ENCRYPT_METHOD in /etc/login.defs and does not override the chosen method anymore
• changes in the filesystem (>= 2023.09.18 ) and pambase (>= 20230918 ) packages ensure, that umask is set centrally in /etc/login.defs instead of /etc/profile

[1] https://www.openwall.com/yescrypt/

[2] https://man.archlinux.org/man/umask.1p

[3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PAM

[4] https://www.password-hashing.net/

[5] https://github.com/besser82/libxcrypt/pull/113

[6] https://github.com/besser82/libxcrypt/pull/150

[7] https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam/issues/607

[8] https://man.archlinux.org/man/pam_unix.8

As of ansible-core 2.15.3 , upstream moved documentation and examples to a separate dedicated repository (see the related changelogs ).
This means that, starting from version 2.15.3 the ansible-core package will stop shipping documentation and a default configuration example under /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg .

Regarding the documentation, it is available online: https://docs.ansible.com/
As for the configuration file, as explained in the wiki , a base config can be generated with the following command:

ansible-config init --disabled > ansible.cfg

After updating from ansible-core <= 2.15.2-1 to >= 2.15.3-1 , everyone using a custom global Ansible configuration file stored under /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg will have their configuration saved as a pacsave file.
To restore it, run the following command:

mv /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg.pacsave /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

When upgrading from budgie-desktop 10.7.2-5 to 10.7.2-6, the package mutter43 must be replaced with magpie-wm, which currently depends on mutter. As mutter43 conflicts with mutter, manual intervention is required to complete the upgrade.

First remove mutter43, then immediately perform the upgrade. Do not relog orreboot between these steps.

pacman -Rdd mutter43

pacman -Syu

Starting from version 2023.66594-9, TeX Live packages have been reorganized to mirror upstream collections. Even though the new texlive-basic replaces the old texlive-core , many of the texlive-core contents (including language specific files) are now split between different packages. To find out which Arch package contains a specific CTAN package, you can use the tlmgr utility, eg.

$ tlmgr info euler | grep collectioncollection:  collection-latexrecommended

which means the euler CTAN package is contained in texlive-latexrecommended . You may also use pacman -F to query for specific files.

A new metapackage texlive-meta is available to install all subpackages (except for language specific ones), and the new texlive-doc package provides the full documentation for offline use.

The openblas package prior to version 0.3.23-2 doesn't ship optimizedLAPACK routine and CBLAS/LAPACKE interfaces for compatibility. Thisdecision has been reverted now, and the ability to choose a differentdefault system BLAS/LAPACK implementation while keeping openblasinstalled is now provided to allow future co-installation of BLIS,ATLAS, etc.

The default BLAS implementation will be used for most packages likeNumPy or R. Please install "blas-openblas" and "blas64-openblas" to makeOpenBLAS the default BLAS implementation, just like the old behavior.

Unfortunately you will get errors on updating if you currently haveOpenBLAS installed as the default BLAS implementation:

error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies):: installing openblas (0.3.23-2) breaks dependency 'blas' required by cblas:: installing openblas (0.3.23-2) breaks dependency 'blas' required bylapack

Please append your preferred default BLAS implementation to the regular-Syu command line to get around it. For example:

pacman -Syu blas-openblas

or

pacman -Syu blas

We are proud to announce that the migration to Git packaging succeeded! 🥳

Thanks to everyone who has helped during the migration!

Package sources are now available on GitLab . Note that the bugtracker is still flyspray and that merge requests are not accepted as of now. We intend to open the issue tracker and merge requests on the Gitlab package repos in the near future.

Mirrors are syncing again, but it may take a bit of time until your mirror of choice has caught up.

For users

Update your system and merge the pacman pacnew /etc/pacman.conf.pacnew file. This is required as we have moved the [community] repository into [extra] .

$ pacman -Syu "pacman>=6.0.2-7"`

For users of the now deprecated asp tool, you will need to switch to pkgctl :

$ pacman -Syu "devtools>=1:1.0.0-1"$ pkgctl repo clone linux

For some more detailed instructions on how to obtain PKGBUILDs see the corresponding wiki article .

For packagers

Before starting, first uninstall devtools-git-poc and remove any repos from your filesystem that you cloned during the git proof-of-concept testing.

Make sure you have both, an updated devtools and pacman on your system:

$ pacman -Syu "devtools>=1:1.0.0-1" "pacman>=6.0.2-7"`

Additionally clean up old chroots in /var/lib/archbuild/

$ rm -rf /var/lib/archbuild/# or optionally, use the --clean option for pkgctl build *ONCE*$ pkgctl build --clean

For instruction on how to use pkgctl , please take a look at the "How to be a packager" wiki article and also consult the man page of each subcommand for further information:

$ man pkgctl-build$ man pkgctl-repo-clone

This Friday morning (2023-05-19) the Git packaging migration will start until Sunday (2023-05-21). The Arch Linux packaging team will not be able to update packages in any of the repositories during this period.

Notification when the migration starts, and when it is completed, will be published on the [arch-dev-public] mailing list.

How does this impact Arch Linux users?

The [testing] repository will be split into [core-testing] and [extra-testing] , the [staging] repository will be split into [core-staging] and [extra-staging] . The [community] repository will be merged into [extra] and will therefore be empty after the migration.

All affected repositories will be provided as empty repositories for a transition period after the migration. For regular users, this means that everything works as before.

Note: After the migration is done, users that have the testing repositories enabled need to include the new repositories ( [core-testing] and [extra-testing] instead of [testing] ) in their pacman.conf before updating their system.

Other changes:

• SVN access is discontinued and will dissappear.
• The svn2git mirror will no longer be updated.
• asp , which relies on the svn2git mirror, will stop working. It is replaced by pkgctl repo clone .

How does this impact Arch Linux tier 1 mirrors?

During the migration rsync and HTTP access will be shut down. We will send an email notification to arch-mirrors once everything has been finished.

How does this impact Arch Linux packagers?

Packagers will not be able to patch and update their packages. The internal Tier 0 mirror is also going to be disabled for the duration of this migration.

The base-devel package group has recently been replaced by a meta package of the same name.
People that had the base-devel package group installed (meaning people that installed base-devel before February 2nd) have to explicitly re-install it to get the new base-devel package installed on their system:

pacman -Syu base-devel