This morning, after a system update, I notice CMake as a new app in my application launcher (I am on Plasma, should it matter, but I don’t imagine it is essential). Since I did not have it installed previously, and I was only updating, not installing anything additional, I am not sure why. AI suggests it might be used to build something, if it is the case, is it not a bit sloppy to leave it behind? I have also had a similar case recently with a package called accounts-qml-module which appeared miraculously after an AUR update.
Would anyone be able to shed some light on why they appeared, and whether it is necessary to keep them, or shall I remove?
I agree with @drhydroxide : it is probably installed because of some AUR package you built. Look here:
╰─> pacman -Qi cmake
Installed From : cachyos-extra-znver4
Name : cmake
Version : 4.3.3-1.1
Description : A cross-platform open-source make system
Architecture : x86_64_v4
URL : https://www.cmake.org/
Licenses : BSD-3-Clause
Groups : None
Provides : None
Depends On : cppdap curl expat glibc hicolor-icon-theme jsoncpp libarchive libgcc libstdc++ libuv ncurses rhash zlib
Optional Deps : make: for unix Makefile generator [installed]
ninja: for ninja generator
qt6-base: cmake-gui [installed]
Required By : None
Optional For : None
Conflicts With : None
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 98.48 MiB
Packager : CachyOS <admin@cachyos.org>
Build Date : Thu 21 May 2026 11:17:37 PM CEST
Install Date : Tue 02 Jun 2026 07:10:31 AM CEST
Install Reason : Installed as a dependency for another package
Install Script : No
Validated By : Signature
It’s currently not required by anything, but I know for sure that it’s needed to build the epsonscan2 package from the AUR.
Not really, it’s pretty normal. Paru asks if you want to remove makedepends so the choice is up to you.
A mechanism to easily keep developer tools from popping up in non-developer menus would be welcome. I know sonething like cmake has a gui but I can’t help but wonder if it’d be better or worse if it didn’t install a .Desktop file as default.
❯ pacman -Qi accounts-qml-module
Installed From : None
Name : accounts-qml-module
Version : 0.7-8
Description : Expose the Online Accounts API to QML applications
Architecture : x86_64
URL : https://gitlab.com/accounts-sso/accounts-qml-module
Licenses : LGPL-2.1-only
Groups : None
Provides : None
Depends On : glibc libaccounts-qt libgcc libstdc++ qt6-base qt6-declarative signond
Optional Deps : None
Required By : None
Optional For : None
Conflicts With : None
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 277.21 KiB
Packager : Unknown Packager
Build Date : Sun May 31 09:42:05 2026
Install Date : Sun May 31 09:42:18 2026
Install Reason : Installed as a dependency for another package
Install Script : No
Validated By : None
Says “installed as a dependency for another package”, but “required by none”, might not be so crucial, but still, I was wondering…
( BTW - You can print all orphans with pacman -Qdt )
It also probably means it was installed either as a
A makedepend along with some less elegant procedure. Whether from;
some particular AUR helper
or using makepkg without r flag and so on.
A more regular depend that;
became an orphan over time due either to some upgrades
or to similarly less encompassing removals like sudo pacman -R with out the s flag.
This appears to have occurred on May 31 so you could go looking around your logs to see exactly what happened then. There is a pacman log at /var/log/pacman.log.