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I want to get additional descriptive (free-text) information on the packages I'm querying when using pacman on my Arch Linux machine (actually Parabola GNU/Linux-Libre).

While both pacman -Qi <name-of-package> and pacman -Si <name-of-package> provide me with a field called Description, this only contains a one-line summary of the package.

Example:

$ pacman -Qi gimp

...
Description: GNU Image Manipulation Programm
...

When comparing this to apt (or aptitude) on my Debian Stable machine (actually PureOS 9.0 Amber), I can use apt show <name-of-package> or aptitude show <name-of-package> to not just get this one-line summary, but one or several additional paragraphs with free-text information.

Example:


$ apt show gimp

...
Description: GNU Image Manipulation Program
 GIMP is an advanced picture editor. You can use it to edit, enhance, and
 retouch photos and scans, create drawings, and make your own images.
 It has a large collection of professional-level editing tools and
 filters, similar to the ones you might find in Photoshop. Numerous
 fine-control settings and features like layers, paths, masks, and
 scripting give you total control over your images.
 .
 Many image file formats are supported, including JPEG, Photoshop (.psd),
 and Paint Shop Pro (.psp) files. It can also be used to scan and print
 photos.
 .
 To open files remotely (like over HTTP), install the gvfs-backends
 package.
 .
 To use a MIDI device (like a musical keyboard) as an input controller in GIMP,
 install libasound2 and read the how-to at /usr/share/doc/gimp/README.MIDI

The Rosetta for pacman sais that pacman -Si or pacman -Qi is the quivalent to apt show or zypper info, but I'm missing the additional free-text description (which is obviously very useful if I don't already know the program).

Is there a pacman-option to enable that? Or is this information just missing from the Arch Linux- or the Parabola-repositories?

n0542344
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  • AFAIK, nothing else othere than `-Qi` and `-Si` is out there. I used to work with Ubuntu a long time ago and the transition to a terser env was as you describe it at first. After a while you may realize that you can actually run on info w/ fewer words. That's my case. When I need to dig into something related to a package, I go to the corresponding project's page when that is available. – Cbhihe Jun 22 '21 at 15:19

1 Answers1

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I wouldn't know whether this is true for (all of) its derivative distributions, but packages on Arch Linux only have that short description; which is mentioned in the Arch Wiki page on PKGBUILD files (the scripts used to build packages):

pkgdesc
The description of the package. This is recommended to be 80 characters or less [...]

and in the Arch package guidelines; see, in particular, the Package etiquette paragraph:

When creating a package description for a package [...]. Also try to keep the descriptions to ~80 characters or less.

Looking at the Debian Policy, the extended description of packages does not (usually) come from upstream and is meant to be added by packagers instead. Such a practice would seem inconsistent with Arch's KISS nature.

fra-san
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