The compression algorithm zstd brings faster compression and decompression, while maintaining a compression ratio comparable with xz. This will speed up package installation with pacman, without further drawbacks.
The imminent release of pacman 5.2 brings build tools with support for compressing packages with zstd. To install these packages you need libarchive with support for zstd, which entered the repositories in September 2018. In order for zstd compressed packages to be distributed, we require all users to have updated to at least libarchive 3.3.3-1. You have had a year, so we expect you already did update. Hurry up if you have not.
If you use custom scripts make sure these do not rely on hardcoded file extensions. The zstd package file extension will be .pkg.tar.zst.
The base group has been replaced by a metapackage of the same name. We advise users to install this package (pacman -Syu base), as it is effectively mandatory from now on.
Users requesting support are expected to be running a system with the base package.
Addendum:
Be aware that base as it stands does not currently contain:
... and other software that you might expect. You will have to install these separately on new installations.
there is a subtlety to note with the packaging of bleachbit-2.2.2 - if you have ever previously run bleachbit with su privilidges, you will be unable to upgrade to bleachbit-2.2.2 - you must run this command first:
# rm -rf /usr/share/bleachbit
The astyle package prior to version 3.1-2 was missing a soname link. This has been fixed in 3.1-2, so the upgrade will need to overwrite the untracked soname link created by ldconfig. If you get an error
astyle: /usr/lib/libastyle.so.3 exists in filesystem
when updating, use
pacman -Suy --overwrite usr/lib/libastyle.so.3
to perform the upgrade.
The libbloom package prior to version 1.6-2 was missing a soname link. This has been fixed in 1.6-2, so the upgrade will need to overwrite the untracked soname link created by ldconfig. If you get an error
libbloom: /usr/lib/libbloom.so.1 exists in filesystem
when updating, use
pacman -Suy --overwrite usr/lib/libbloom.so.1
to perform the upgrade.
