How to configure repositories

All repository information is saved in the ‘pacman.conf’ file. Edit this file with nano editor.

# nano /etc/pacman.conf

By default only stable repositories are enabled, but you can un-comment other repositories if you need alpha or pre-release packages. However, let’s start with only stable packages so you don’t nuke your Arch system. If you are using 64 system, you can still install 32 bit applications on your system. All you need to do is enable the ‘multilib’ repo. This will create a separate directory for 32-bit applications. Scroll down in the ‘pacman.conf’ file and un-comment the ‘multilib’ repo:

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Save and close the config file. Then update the repositories by running this command:

# pacman -Sy

Note: You must always update repos before installing any packages. If you need packages that are not available in the official repo and you don’t want to compile them, you can always add more repositories to the config file.