When a package update breaks something, I sometimes need to downgrade to the previous working version. I can handle the downgrade itself, but pacman's ignore list keeps excluding the package until I manually remove it. Is there a way to skip only the currently broken version, get notified when a newer version is available, and then automatically allow the package to update again?
4 Answers
Be careful with this approach because holding back individual packages creates a partial upgrade, which is unsupported and can cause dependency or ABI problems. The safer Arch workflow is usually to avoid updating temporarily until the broken package is fixed, or downgrade consistently from a trusted package cache or archive while watching for the corrected release.
When a specific update is known to be broken, many users simply wait a few days before doing a full system update. Arch problems are often corrected quickly, and updating everything together avoids the risks of leaving one package behind. If you do hold it back, keep the exception temporary and check the package's release history manually.
If you regularly need version blocking, another distribution may fit better. Some package managers provide more direct support for version constraints and mixing stable and testing packages. On Arch, though, selectively ignoring packages is generally treated as a workaround rather than a supported upgrade strategy.
Pacman's IgnorePkg setting works at the package-name level, not as a one-version skip. In practice, you would need to keep the package ignored and periodically check for a newer version, then remove it from the ignore list yourself. Tools or a small script could automate that check, but there is no built-in "skip exactly this version" feature.
The reason I am doing this is that particular releases have genuinely broken hardware support for me. Downgrading restored functionality, and I want to return to normal updates as soon as a fixed release is available rather than permanently holding the package back.