Archlinux cleaning installed packages groups with Pacman
On Archlinux pacman allows to install packages as a group. Cleaning those packages and their dependencies is not as straight forward, but it possible to do cleaning by using a few commands.
Here let’s try to clean plasma stuff (finally I find gnome more straightforward to used, despite being sometimes a bit surprised by the lack of customisation or by some choices.)
# Check installed packages from groups
pacman -Qg
# Collect installed list of packages for specific groups
pacman -Qgq plasma > plasma.txt
pacman -Qgq qt >> plasma.txt
pacman -Qgq qt5 >> plasma.txt
pacman -Qgq kf5 >> plasma.txt
pacman -Qgq kf5-aids >> plasma.txt
pacman -Qgq kde-applications >> plasma.txt
# Clean list of package if needed
vim plasma.txt
# Delete the packages and the ones that requires them
# XXX double check what is/will be deleted an reinstall what as needed
sudo pacman -Rc - < plasma.txt
# Reinstall what is still being used
sudo pacman -S nextcloud-client vlc virtualbox qgpgme
Side note: I’m usually using trizen to manage packages and AUR at once.