Pacman Integrations

Arch Linux is an independent, x86 64 general-purpose GNU/Linux distribution. It strives to provide stable versions of most software through a rolling-release approach. The default installation is a minimal system that can be configured by the user to add only what is needed. Arch Linux is simple. It doesn't allow for unnecessary modifications or additions. It ships software as released by the original developers (upstream) with minimal distribution-specific (downstream) changes, patches not accepted by upstream are avoided, and Arch's downstream patches consist almost entirely of backported bug fixes that are obsoleted by the project's next release. Arch ships the configuration files provided by upstream with changes limited to distribution-specific issues like adjusting the system file paths. It does not add automation features, such as enabling a service just because the package has been installed.

MSYS2 is a collection tools and libraries that provide an easy-to use environment for building, installing, and running native Windows software. It includes a command-line terminal called mintty, bash and version control systems such as git and subversion. Tools like tar, awk, and even build systems such as autotools. All of these are based on modified Cygwin. MSYS2's core components are based on Cygwin. However, the main purpose of MSYS2 was to provide a build environment that native Windows software can use. The Cygwin-using parts of MSYS2 are kept to a minimum. MSYS2 provides the latest native builds for GCC and mingw–w64, CPython CMake, Meson OpenSSL, FFmpeg Rust, Ruby, and CMake. Pacman is a package management system that makes it easy to install packages and keeps them updated. This should be familiar to Arch Linux users.