During my weekly maintenance, one of the commands I run is paru -Ps which displayed I had an Aur package (I generally don’t use the Aur).
I traced it to the package jack (A low-latency audio server).
If I understand correctly, it happened because Arch dropped the jack package replacing it with jack2 & so it is now an Aur package.
My question is, do I need to deal with it manually or will some future cachy-update deal with it?
And if manually, what exactly? Remove jack & install jack2? To the best of my knowledge, that wouldn’t work or rather it would brake a number of audio apps relying on jack?
(Can’t embed more than 1 picture because of the newbie rule(?), but it is also in the AUR section)
Here’s the output from pacman:
❯ pacman -Qi jack
Installed From : None
Name : jack
Version : 0.126.0-6
Description : A low-latency audio server
Architecture : x86_64
URL : https://github.com/jackaudio/jack1
Licenses : GPL-2.0-or-later LGPL-2.1-or-later
Groups : None
Provides : libjack.so=0-64 libjackserver.so=0-64
Depends On : alsa-lib libasound.so=2-64 db glibc libsamplerate libsamplerate.so=0-64
Optional Deps : celt: NetJACK driver
jack-docs: for developer documentation
jack-example-tools: for official JACK example-clients and tools
libffado: FireWire support
realtime-privileges: Acquire realtime privileges
Required By : ffmpeg ffmpeg4.4 fluidsynth portaudio vlc-plugin-jack
Optional For : alsa-plugins gst-plugins-good mpg123 sdl3
Conflicts With : jack2 pipewire-jack
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 771.06 KiB
Packager : CachyOS <admin@cachyos.org>
Build Date : Sat 10 Jan 2026 12:30:10 PM CST
Install Date : Sun 19 Apr 2026 07:13:06 PM CDT
Install Reason : Installed as a dependency for another package
Install Script : No
Validated By : Signature
I don’t see this package on https://packages.cachyos.org/, so it is provided by the CachyOS team, but lives as an AUR package, and still has an entry in the normal packages section? That is quite confusing. If I go ahead and remove all of this and replace it with jack2 and need to revert afterwards for whatever reason, I need to get it myself from the AUR right (even though that means it is no longer packaged by CachyOS team anymore)?
I don’t know about being notified but as as I said in my initial post, one of the commands I run during my weekly checks/maintenance is paru -Ps which amongst other things will list how many Aur packages are installed. If you haven’t installed any then that number should be 0. If you have then I would imagine you know how many & if that number looks right.
If that number doesn’t look correct then you can simply run the command pacman -Qm which will list all installed packages not from the official repos (i.e., AUR packages), you can then from that list see the package/s in question.
Well certainly using any of the regular cli tools can make it apparent - you would be upgrading that package from the AUR - or it would be listed as “not in” if not found anywhere.
( Such as when upgrading using a broader tool like paru or arch-update. )
I think some mailing lists would notify you as well but I cannot find/link them right now.
Of course you could always run something like
pacman -Qm
which lists foreign packages.
If you started with none then any number above 0 means some package got demoted to AUR.
If you mean whether an Arch package is in the repos then thats out of any of our hands - Arch will do it if it wants.
We have control over the Cachy ones. But then they wont even necessarily end up in the AUR (these packages will still be printed by something like pacman -Qm because foreign is anythign not in the repositories).
But as to it being installed .. nothing is going to force remove any package without your consent. Not any of the official tools anyways. Just because Arch stopped providing it in its repos does not mean they are going to reach out and take it from you after it was already installed.
Not for me, unfortunately. I’m using a driver for my RME RayDAT audio interface, dedicated to pro audio apps only. Pipewire seems to have trouble mapping its functions properly so I’m forced to use Jack2 (ALSA works with Ardour but no other apps). It’s the only way I can get it to run properly and I’ve tried and tried to find workarounds. I think a lot of the issues stem from SOME applications’ (Bitwig, VCV) alsa/pipewire implementations rather than Pipewire itself.
