Python Applications Stop Working

After a new minor release of Python (e.g. 3.9 -> 3.10) some Python packages from the AUR might stop working. This can be fixed by rebuilding the packages.

To get a list of the Python packages installed on your system you can run:

pacman -Qoq /usr/lib/python3.*

This gives you a list of packages that have files installed under the given directory (/usr/lib/python3.9{x..y}). Since the directory changes when a new version of Python is released you will need to rebuild some or all of these packages.

To initiate a rebuild take your AUR Helper, e.g. with yay, issue the following command:

yay -S $(pacman -Qoq /usr/lib/python3.*) --answerclean All

This will pass all of the packages from the previous list as an argument to yay's install command (-S) and rebuild the packages from scratch (--answerclean All). This will move them to the new directory structure.

However, if any of the packages needing to be rebuilt are not yet compatible with the new version of Python, the rebuild might still fail. Should this happen, pass a list of remaining package names by hand or use the --ignore option and pass it the package names that failed to rebuild (comma-separated, glob patterns are supported).