[Readme: Arch Linux Installation] Is updating the system intended?

[Emily3403]

In the Readme the installation of the Arch Linux package is described as follows

sudo pacman -Syu lapce

This command has the side-effect to update the entire system and in my case downloading 300 MiB and installing 1 GiB while also downloading and installing the lapce package.

Is there any benefit of updating the entire system instead of simply installing the package with the following?

sudo pacman -S lapce

[ghost]

It is just a matter of good practice. You can only download the latest version of a package with -S, so if you do not update the rest of the system as well you might be unlucky and face an incompatibility issue.

Since a text editor is not a critical part of the system, just use -S and do a full update if you face issues or whenever you would normally do it.

I personally do a full upgrade every day before turning the computer off, and I use -S for installing packages in the meantime, since -Syu can replace binaries used by running programs, which can potentially cause issues, so restarting these programs or rebooting the computer might be needed.

[panekj]

Partial upgrades are not supported.