[bwood]

Just because it often works doesn't mean it's a good idea. Updating a single package is officially unsupported [0] and it's burned me personally on a number of occasions.

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_...

[sudosysgen]

The context of the original comment is that you're updating that package on a test server and then testing it.

But sure, just yoloing a single package upgrade can break things, obviously.

[thomastjeffery]

Just because it isn't your good idea doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

[sellyme]

I expect that's why they mentioned that it's officially unsupported behaviour. That doesn't seem too relevant to whose idea it was.

[angvp]

weel it's a bad idea unless you update just one package that doesn't have too many shared dependencies, things gets complicated with shared dependencies across their packages, so that's why it's better to run the full -Syu of course not automated but when you know what you are upgrading and possible manual interventions (if any) or caveats that you might have with the changes.