Failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) when updating packages on Manjaro [closed]

Question

sudo pacman -Syu

I try updating all the packages using pacman on my Manjaro Linux and pacman necessarily does everything to download the latest updates of all the available packages and after checking for file conflicts, it throws

...
(126/126) checking keys in keyring  100%
(126/126) checking package integrity 100%
(126/126) loading package files 100%
(126/126) checking for file conflicts
error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/exec/get-workspace-location-msg.js exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/git/lib/utils.js exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/balanced-match/.github/FUNDING.yml exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/just-diff/index.d.ts exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/just-diff/index.tests.ts exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/CHANGELOG.md exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/LICENSE exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/README.md exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/lib/cache-install-dir.js exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/lib/get-bin-from-manifest.js exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/lib/index.js exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/lib/manifest-missing.js exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/lib/no-tty.js exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/lib/run-script.js exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/libnpmexec/package.json exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/proc-log/LICENSE exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/proc-log/README.md exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/proc-log/index.js exists in filesystem
npm: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/proc-log/package.json exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

Should I have to do anything specific for the node_modules which I assume are the globally installed node modules to be over written or something?

Answer 1

Removing the npm package first and then deleting node_modules directory is a workaround that I used to make this work. However, I am not sure if that is the right solution. You can do something like this before you do a full update and then install the npm back again.

$ sudo pacman -Rns npm
$ sudo rm -R /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/
$ sudo pacman -Syyu
$ sudo pacman -S npm

Answer 2

You can sudo pacman -S npm --overwrite '/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/*'

Comment by the answer's author:

It basically resolves conflicts by overwriting files. In your case, conflicting files are all located in /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/ therefore the * will match all of them. No need to delete them manually with rm -r which would leave the package in an inconsistent state. It is good practice to update/upgrade afterward with sudo pacman -Syyu.