Description:

Pacman v4.0.3

I had to upgrade gnome-settings-daemon (I only need it for compiz's gtk-window-decorator, I actually use XFCE), but I don't want pulseaudio with it, because it ruins my whole sound system. So that's my pacman.conf:

[...]
IgnorePkg = pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa
#IgnoreGroup =

NoUpgrade = pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa
#NoExtract =
[...]

When I tried to -Syu (--force) I had to skip the gnome-settings-daemon package. I couldn't even force upgrade the package gnome-settings-daemon

# pacman -Sf gnome-settings-daemon
loading packages...
resolving dependencies...
warning: ignoring package pulseaudio-2.1-1
warning: cannot resolve "pulseaudio", a dependency of "gnome-settings-daemon"
warning: ignoring package pulseaudio-alsa-2-1
warning: cannot resolve "pulseaudio-alsa", a dependency of "gnome-settings-daemon"
:: The following package cannot be upgraded due to unresolvable dependencies:
gnome-settings-daemon

Do you want to skip the above package for this upgrade? [y/N] n
error: failed to prepare transaction (unexpected error)

(If I answer yes, no package is upgraded)

Steps to reproduce:

1. install a package (call it A)
2. force remove one of its dependencies (call it B and C, A depends on B and C)
3. put the non-required packages (B and C) in the IgnorePkg and NoUpgrade arrays
4. Wait for the next update of package A
5. try to upgrade or force upgrade or just simply install the new version of the package (same message:
error: failed to prepare transaction (unexpected error)
even with -S -Sf -U -Uf -Sfd, etc.)

Workaround:
unIgnore B and C, upgrade A, "pacman -Rdd B C", reIgnore B and C