If `-Sywu` is *immediately* followed by `-Su` then there is no risk of running into a partial upgrade, but:According to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported pacman -Sywu is not safe. But pacman -Syu is safe. Quoting the wiki, the rational is that pacman -Sywu will update the pacman sync database without installing the newer packages. What I fail to see is why pacman -Sywu, followed by pacman -Su, 1. Will update the pacman sync database without installing the newer packages. But then 2. Will not update the pacman sync database while installing the packages it has prevoiusly downloaded.
1) Then there is normally no reason to run those as separate commands,
as `-Sywu` immediately followed by `-Su` has no benefits compared
to simple `-Syu`. `-Sywu` is used to avoid the update, but download
package files to the cache.
2) You are mentioning a system timer, so I assume `-Sywu` is not
immediately followed by `-Su`. Unless you are also running
unattended updates, which is even worse and *will* eventually
break your system.
`checkupdates -d` does exactly the same as `-Sywu`, but without
updating the system-wide sync databases. So pacman’s view of everything
remains the same as if nothing was updated. It only gets package files
in the cache.
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