They are placeholders, but important for things like trying to re-sync a
database missing a signature. By using the alpm_db_validity() method at
the right time, a client can take the appropriate action with these
invalid databases as necessary.
In pacman's case, we disallow just about anything that involves looking
at a sync database outside of an '-Sy' operation (although we do check
the validity immediately after). A few operations are still permitted-
'-Q' ops that don't touch sync databases as well as '-R'.
Signed-off-by: Dan McGee <dan@archlinux.org>
c748eadc80