all packages are managed using the pacman package manager. pacman handles package installation, upgrades, removal, and downgrades, and features automatic dependency resolution. the packages for arch linux are obtained from the arch linux package tree and are compiled for the x86-64 architecture. it uses binary packages in the codice_1 format or codice_2 (for zstd compression), with codice_3 placed before this to indicate that it is a pacman package (giving codice_4 or codice_5).