Arch Linux

purple12

Member

Registered: 2008-08-16

Posts: 73

Quick Question re: Vintage AUR Packages...

Hi,
Just loaded Arch again after a few years, and noticed that a couple of my favorite command line apps had been relegated to the AUR for becoming "out of date."  I really liked the apps, so I built them in the prescribed manner, using the -s and -r arguments for makepkg.  The process whet smoothly, and I have my apps back (yay!), but I'm wondering about the long-term implications of this sort of thing.  Is it generally a good / bad idea, in terms of system maintenace, to install older programs in this way?

Thanks very much!

Last edited by purple12 (2011-08-24 21:54:02)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Quick Question re: Vintage AUR Packages...

Do they build and run? Are you getting any conflicts / errors?
They might have been dropped to AUR because upstream was dead or nobody (I'm talking about devs / TUs) needed them anymore.

purple12

Member

Registered: 2008-08-16

Posts: 73

Re: Quick Question re: Vintage AUR Packages...

Yep...they built just fine and they perform perfectly.  I guess I was mainly just wondering about the implications of loading a bunch of older apps that maybe aren't actively maintained.  Are they ignored when you do a system update?  Is there an increased chance of having update-related issues if you stuff your install with these kinds of apps? 
--just curious.  thx.

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Quick Question re: Vintage AUR Packages...

Yep...they built just fine and they perform perfectly.  I guess I was mainly just wondering about the implications of loading a bunch of older apps that maybe aren't actively maintained.  Are they ignored when you do a system update?  Is there an increased chance of having update-related issues if you stuff your install with these kinds of apps? 
--just curious.  thx.

That depends how are those packages linked w/ e.g. system libraries. If the libraries get a major update, you need to rebuild the stuff that links to those libraries, maybe patch things to make them work.
pacman deals only with the packages installed from the repos - both official repositories and unofficial user repositories. You can use an AUR helper to update packages installed from the AUR. If you do so, packages will be updated if there is an update available. Some packages might work for years even if they're orphaned in the AUR, others might break a month after being dropped to AUR due to some related update.