bootstrap packages: pacman installed-check ignores Provides, so a provider-satisfied package is reinstalled and the transaction aborts on conflict

[jeremy]

Describe the bug

mise bootstrap packages apply --manager pacman reports a package as missing when it is
installed via a provider, then tries to install it. That install cannot succeed —
interchangeable providers conflict with each other by construction — so the whole bootstrap
aborts.

The cause is not that pacman fails to resolve provides. It resolves them fine. installed()
runs one pacman -Q with every declared name as a target:

$ LC_ALL=C pacman -Q mariadb-libs sqlite mariadb-clients valkey
mariadb-libs 12.3.2-4
sqlite 3.53.4-1
percona-server-clients 9.7.1_1-1        <- this answers the mariadb-clients target
valkey 9.1.1-1
$ echo $?
0

pacman answered the mariadb-clients target under the provider's name. parse_pacman_query
then keys the output by the printed name and looks each request up by its requested name:

installed.insert(name, version);                      // "percona-server-clients"
...
let state = match installed.get(req.name.as_str()) {  // "mariadb-clients" -> None
    ...
    None => PackageState::Missing,

So the request falls through to PackageState::Missing. Nothing in the exit status or stderr
flags it: pacman -Q exits 0 and prints no "was not found" for a provider-satisfied target.

Concretely: percona-server-clients provides mariadb-clients, and both own /usr/bin/mysql.
Declaring "pacman:mariadb-clients" on a machine with percona-server-clients installed makes
mise bootstrap packages apply unrunnable.

To Reproduce

On Arch, with percona-server-clients installed and mariadb-clients not:

# mise.toml
[bootstrap.packages]
"pacman:mariadb-clients" = "latest"

$ pacman -Qi percona-server-clients | grep -E 'Provides|Conflicts'
Provides        : mysql-clients=9.7.1_1  mariadb-clients=9.7.1_1
Conflicts With  : mysql-clients  libperconaserverclient

$ mise bootstrap packages apply --manager pacman --dry-run
mise pacman: 30 package(s) already installed
sudo pacman -S --noconfirm --needed -- mariadb-clients

That command cannot succeed. mariadb-clients declares Conflicts With: mysql-clients,
which percona-server-clients provides, and the two also file-conflict:

$ pacman -F usr/bin/mysql
usr/bin/mysql is owned by extra/mariadb-clients 12.3.2-4
usr/bin/mysql is owned by extra/mariadb-lts-clients 11.8.8-3
usr/bin/mysql is owned by extra/percona-server-clients 9.7.1_1-1

Under --noconfirm pacman will not remove the installed provider, so it exits with
unresolvable package conflicts detected and the bootstrap step fails.

Expected behavior

A declared package that pacman already considers satisfied — by name or by an installed
provider — should be reported as installed and skipped, the same way pacman itself treats it.

mise bootstrap packages status should likewise report it as installed rather than
permanently missing.

Suggested fix

The -Q reply cannot be re-matched to the request by name, since pacman may answer under a
different name; nor by position, since a genuinely missing package produces no line at all.

pacman -T (deptest) answers exactly the question being asked — it prints only the
requirements that nothing satisfies:

$ pacman -T -- mariadb-libs sqlite mariadb-clients valkey
$ echo $?
0

A minimal fix keeps the existing -Q pass and adds a second pass over only the requests that
came back Missing:

1. pacman -T -- <names that came back Missing> — the names it prints are genuinely missing;
   any name it omits is satisfied by an installed provider.
2. For those, a single-target pacman -Q <name> returns the one provider line, giving a
   version to report.

Two details worth keeping:

• pacman -T with no arguments reads stdin, so the empty case needs a guard.
• It reports satisfaction, not the satisfying package, which is why step 2 is separate.

A name that resolves to a group rather than a package is not satisfiable by -T and stays
Missing — no change from today.

Scope beyond pacman

The underlying question — does an installed provider satisfy a declared name — is not
pacman-specific, but the mechanism above is, so I would not assume the same patch applies:

• apt/dpkg — virtual packages (default-mysql-client, awk, httpd). The check shells
  dpkg-query -W, which does not resolve Provides at all, so it fails earlier and differently
  than pacman does.
• apk — provides in APKBUILD.
• Homebrew has no equivalent, so brew is unaffected.

I have only tested pacman.

mise doctor

Trimmed to the relevant fields — the rest is employer-internal paths and settings.

version: 2026.8.3 linux-x64 (2026-08-08)
activated: yes
shims_on_path: yes
self_update_available: no

build_info:
  Target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
  Features: native-tls
  Built: Sat, 8 Aug 2026 02:16:09 +0000
  Rust Version: rustc 1.97.1 (8bab26f4f 2026-07-14) (Arch Linux rust 1:1.97.1-1)
  Profile: release

No problems found

Arch Linux, x86_64. 2026.8.8 is out as of writing; I have not retested on it, but nothing
in the changelog looked related to the pacman package backend.

Workaround

For anyone hitting this before a fix lands: ask pacman what's unsatisfied and pass only that
to mise explicitly, rather than letting it converge the declared set.

while read -r package; do
  pacman -T -- "$package" > /dev/null || missing+=("pacman:$package")
done < <(mise bootstrap packages status | awk '$1 == "pacman" { print $2 }')

[ "${#missing[@]}" -gt 0 ] && mise bootstrap packages apply --yes "${missing[@]}"

---

Edited to correct the mechanism. The first version of this post said mise enumerated installed
packages and matched names against that set. That was wrong: it queries the declared names
directly, pacman resolves the provider, and the answer is lost when the reply is matched back
to the request. The suggested fix changed accordingly.

[jdx]

Thanks for the detailed report. The diagnosis is correct: pacman -Q resolves the provider, but mise lost that association when it keyed the result by the provider package name.

I opened #12183 with the fix: #12183

It keeps the batched pacman -Q, runs pacman -T only for apparent misses, and queries provider-satisfied names individually to recover the installed version. It also skips provider-satisfied aliases during targeted upgrades so mise bootstrap packages upgrade cannot trigger the same replacement/conflict path.

The PR includes focused regression coverage and updated pacman documentation.

One small correction to the report: current upstream pacman reads targets from stdin only when - is supplied, not merely when pacman -T has no targets. The implementation still guards the empty case.

AI-assisted — Tool: Codex; model: openai/gpt-5; version: unavailable.