1. If you mean merging package/upstream config with user/system modified config, yes, run pacdiff 2. Use needsrestart (isn't this what Debian uses also?) 3. I

1. If you mean merging package/upstream config with user/system modified config, yes, run pacdiff 2. Use needsrestart (isn't this what Debian uses also?) 3. I don't package python things, I wouldn't know. Maybe, maybe not. Do the above have different trade offs that are not best fit for everyone? Yes, of course. I used Debian for about a decade, and Arch for almost as long, and have found everything clear and well documented. All the various functionality I want is typically implemented by a simple tool designed for that one job, with a nice wiki page/entry that I could find trivially. I did not write my post in order to start a "distribution debate". I had the sense that the contents of debian/ in the OP were not fully given, because there was a lot there, and I wanted to know if that was true, and if so, why. Having a pretty short and self-explanatory single file alternative to look at might prompt someone to pipe up and say "look, the Debian equivalent is short/long/simple/complex" in a clear way, which would be interesting because I consider such Arch examples to be near ideal.