Things to Know

Vokun wraps pacman with friendlier commands and adds bundle management on top. Most of it works the way you’d expect, but a few behaviors are worth calling out.

Bundle commands vs package commands

Vokun separates metadata operations from package operations. The bundle subcommands (create, add, rm, edit, delete) only touch the TOML definition files. They never install or remove packages from the system.

The top-level commands (install, remove, sync, rollback) are the ones that actually interact with pacman.

Command	What it does
`vokun bundle add coding git`	Adds `git` to the TOML file for `coding`
`vokun install coding`	Installs all packages listed in `coding`
`vokun bundle delete coding`	Deletes the TOML file — does not remove packages
`vokun remove coding`	Removes packages that vokun installed for `coding`

If you want to delete a custom bundle and its packages, run vokun remove first, then vokun bundle delete.

vokun remove only removes what vokun installed

When you install a bundle, vokun records which packages were newly installed versus which were already on your system. When you later run vokun remove, only the packages that vokun actually installed are removed. Pre-existing packages are kept.

Use --all to override this and remove everything in the bundle regardless of origin. Use --untrack to stop tracking a bundle without removing any packages.

–overwrite and –downgrade are direct-package-only

Both vokun get --overwrite and vokun get --downgrade are escape hatches for specific problems (file conflicts and bad updates, respectively). They only work with vokun get, not through bundle installs. This is intentional — bundle installs go through a different workflow with conflict pre-flight checks.

Downgrading AUR packages is not supported

vokun get --downgrade checks the local pacman cache first, then falls back to the Arch Linux Archive (ALA) for official repo packages. AUR packages are not in the ALA — they are built locally from source. To downgrade an AUR package, you need to check out an older commit from the AUR git repo and rebuild it manually with your AUR helper.

After downgrading, the next update will re-upgrade

When you downgrade a package with vokun get --downgrade, the next vokun update will upgrade it back to the latest version. If you need to keep the older version, add the package to IgnorePkg in /etc/pacman.conf:

IgnorePkg = mesa

Vokun reminds you of this after every downgrade.

vokun get prompts to add packages to a bundle

After a successful vokun get, you are prompted to add the package to a bundle. This keeps ad-hoc installs organized. You can type a bundle name, new to create one, or n to skip.

Disable this with auto_prompt = false in vokun.conf.

vokun yeet blocks removal of bundle-tracked packages

If you vokun yeet a package that belongs to an installed bundle, vokun blocks the removal to prevent silent drift between your bundles and your system. Use --force to override — this removes the package and updates the bundle’s state to reflect the change. Use --untrack to remove the package from bundle tracking without touching the system.

Rollback is single-step

vokun rollback undoes the most recent reversible action only. It is not a full undo history. Reversible actions are:

get (package install)
yeet (package removal)
bundle-install (bundle install)
bundle-remove (bundle removal)

Actions like sync, snapshot restore, and bundle delete are not reversible through rollback.

Bundle extends is single-level

A bundle can use extends = "parent" in its [meta] section to inherit packages from another bundle. However, the parent bundle cannot itself extend another bundle. This is a deliberate single-level restriction to keep bundle resolution simple and predictable.

Partial AUR updates warn you

Running vokun update --aur-only updates AUR packages without a full system update (pacman -Syu). This can cause dependency mismatches between AUR packages and system libraries. Vokun warns you about this and offers to run a full update instead. If you proceed anyway, you accept the risk.

Snapshots match packages, not versions

vokun snapshot restore ensures that the same set of packages is installed, but it does not pin or restore specific package versions. If you created a snapshot with mesa 24.1 and later upgraded to mesa 24.2, restoring that snapshot will keep mesa 24.2 because the package is already present. Snapshots are about which packages are on your system, not which versions. To pin a specific version, add the package to IgnorePkg in /etc/pacman.conf.

Dependencies and vokun setup

Vokun works with just pacman, bash, and curl, but several features require optional dependencies:

Dependency	What breaks without it
`jq`	State tracking, sync, export/import, AUR checking, profiles
`fzf`	Interactive pickers (falls back to numbered menus)
`paccache`	Cache management (`vokun cache --clean/--purge`)
`paru`/`yay`	AUR installs, `--aur` flags, `vokun check`/`diff`

If a missing dependency blocks a command, vokun points you to vokun setup, which checks all dependencies and offers to install anything missing.