During Pacman installations, you may get asked questions about configuration or how the installation
proceeds. Pacman has the ability to save the answers to these questions so that if you reinstall or update
software, you don't have to answer the questions all over again. Here's a simple example showing how this
works. Do
% pacman -get Demo:Choice
You will be asked a few questions which you should answer any way you like. Now do
% pacman -l -d cmp
and you will see something like this
[*] Choice, in cache [/home/youssef/Pacman/work]
[*] AND
[*] setcwd /home/youssef/Pacman/work
[*] setenv temporary PACMAN_INSTALLATION => /home/youssef/Pacman/work
[*] packageName Choice
[*] cache of origin Demo
[*] pacman source code Choice.pacman
[*] OR
[ ] AND
[ ] choice Asked [Choose a color] chosen [red] from ['red', 'green', 'blue'] user chose [blue].
[ ] user message "Red"
[ ] AND
[ ] choice Asked [Choose a color] chosen [green] from ['red', 'green', 'blue'] user chose [blue].
[ ] user message "Green"
[*] AND
[*] choice Asked [Choose a color] chosen [blue] from ['red', 'green', 'blue'] user chose [blue].
[*] user message "Blue"
[*] OR
[*] AND
[*] choice Asked [OK to print "hello"?] chosen [y] from ['y', 'n'] user chose [y].
[*] user message "hello"
[ ] true
[*] setenv USER_CHOICE => AAAAA
[*] user message "Done with choices"
[*] setcwd /home/youssef/Pacman/work
to see how your choices have determined what happened during the installation. Now do
% pacman -remove
% pacman -get Demo:Choice
and you will see that the installation proceeds assuming the answers that you gave the first time. To
re-install ignoring the previous answers, do
% pacman -remove
% pacman -get Demo:Choice -ignore-cookies
and you will see that you get asked the questions again.
Of course, this only applies to questions which are asked using the Pacman language rather than via executing a shell script.