TUs, AUR, and voting

phrakture · 2005-06-02 16:37:34

Ok, so I was under the impression that the purpose of the voting mechanism in the AUR was so the TUs knew which packages should be moved to the community repo (based on demand).

Let's look at some stats:
community has about 100 or so packages
20 have gotten 0 votes in the AUR
67 have gotten less than 10 votes (single digits, most are between 1 and 5)

That leaves 13 packages with 10 or more votes in the the community repo. Not much of a "community repository" if the community has negligable say.

now, just to grab the top handful of packages from "unsupported"

azureus 2.3.0.2-1, 35 votes
adesklets 0.4.8-2, 23 votes
winetools 212jo-2, 22 votes
bzflag 2.0.2.20050318-1, 18 votes
p7zip 4.18-1, 18 votes
gnomebaker 0.3-1, 17 votes
easytag-devel 1.99.4-1, 15 votes
mythtv 0.18.1-1, 15 votes
ndiswrapper 1.1-2, 15 votes
skype 1.1.0.13-1, 15 votes

It just doesn't seem right...

What gives? It seems people are using the community repo to host packages *they* want, and not ones that the community wants

I'd recommend changing the repo name from "community" if this continues, perhaps to "haphazard"?

i3839 · 2005-06-02 17:45:11

I thought the original meaning of a vote was that the package worked, so it was a way to tell that the package is fine, not that it is popular. So there may be some confusion here.

As for people only supporting stuff they want: It's all volunteers work, so it's only to be expected. I don't see what's the problem with it. Forcing people to do stuff they don't like or want isn't the best way to keep them doing the stuff they do want. This is open source: people do what they care about, and stuff no one cares enough about to do is never done.

Only difference between AUR packages and others is that the AUR ones aren't really trusted (more fear for buggy install scripts than of someone hiding a trojan). So what about the following proposal:

Some way to make a distinction between packages with or without (un-)install scripts. Packages without any scripts can be trusted to not accidentally screw up the system. And then have two AUR repo's, one where packages can be normally installed, but only the packages without scripts, and one with the packages with scripts.

phrakture · 2005-06-02 17:52:38

Well, in the AUR guidelines it says that TUs should not adopt a package to the community repo with less than 25 votes. So obviously, the voting has something to do with the binaries...

I agree that voting should be for the functioning of the package, but it can also stand for popularity at the same time.

cactus · 2005-06-02 18:19:55

i3839 wrote:

Packages without any scripts can be trusted to not accidentally screw up the system.

That is simply untrue. Try creating a package with the following line in it:

mkdir -m700 $startdir/pkg/usr $startdir/pkg/sbin $startdir/pkg/bin $startdir/pkg/etc

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=12086

phrakture · 2005-06-02 18:27:10

or a package which peppers a bunch of potential directories with ".htaccess" files...

Mr Green · 2005-06-02 18:35:40

emmm I just go there looking for packages that are not in repro ... or maybe not even on forums ...

guess I got some reading up to do :oops:

Dusty · 2005-06-02 18:39:24

I'm not too concerned about the positive voting, but I was wondering about negative votes... nobody's gonna bother to vote 'no' for a package in extra or community, but how do the packagers know if they are managing a package that nobody uses?

Also, my understanding of the vote mechanism was that packages in unsupported that get enough votes get moved to community, while those in community that get enough votes get moved to extra. I don't know why I thought that, besides being in on the very very early discussion of the concept...

Dusty

i3839 · 2005-06-02 19:19:22

cactus wrote:

That is simply untrue. Try creating a package with the following line in it:

Ugh, but IMHO that's a bug somewhere and shouldn't be possible to happen in the first place.

As for the .htaccess files, I clearly said safe in the sense of accidentally messing stuff up, you could have any binary setuid root which does all kind of nasty stuff in the package, but that's not the point. There are way more people who accidentally mess stuff up than those wanting to do real harm. Though both can be filtered by auditing packages.

medicated · 2005-06-02 20:31:07

How does everyone else go about voting on packages in AUR? Personally, if I need a package that is not in any of the repos, I search AUR. I'll take a look at the PKGBUILD and if it looks safe, I give it a try. If the package appears to be working well after a week or so, I'll go ahead and vote for it. I will not vote for a PKGBUILD that I don't use. For example, I'm not going to go out and download every package from AUR just to see if the PKGBUILD works. That just wouldn't make sense. So, I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I'm kind of confused about how AUR is going to be a success. Only the very popular packages that are created correctly can make it into community. Well, what are the numbers of people who are actually using AUR? With the given user base of Arch Linux, what is the probability that 25 people are going to need and vote for a good package? Is AUR more a place to find rare packages or is it more of a means of getting packages into a public repo? The way it looks to me is that AUR is more of a means of finding a rare package and putting it to use rather than verifying a build is worth having a public repo. That was quite possibly a lot of confusion.. Can anyone pull anything useful out of my post? Am I crazy?

phrakture · 2005-06-02 20:38:14

no medicated, that's kinda where my thinking is now...

the AUR, in theory and by my understanding, is supposed to be a place for people to upload PKGBUILDs - plain and simple. from there TUs are supposed to take the PKGBUILDs and add them to the community repo based on user votes (read the AUR guidelines - the voting mechanism is supposed to be used to not waste the TUs time with a few hundred unpopular packages) - by the way, medicated, I vote like you do... only on packages I use that I have tested (or packages I upload myself, he he)

anyway, the reason for the original posting is that the voting seems to be being ignored, making the community repo just basically one big TUR repo...

it seems there's no point in voting, because when a package does manage to get a decent amount of votes (azureus has 35, adesklets 23) no one cares...

medicated · 2005-06-02 20:57:58

Is there some sort of TUR notification system in place..or are TUR's just supposed to go to AUR and pick packages? Also, there is no requirement for a TUR to adopt a package, the guidelines simply state that:

If a package receives 25 votes, it may be adopted by a TUR.

So does this mean that a TUR needs to find a package useful in order for its adoption? Soo..lets say a package gets 30 votes, but none of the TUR's want to maintain it..then what?

phrakture · 2005-06-02 21:03:16

I think that defeats the point of a "community" repo... I mean, I'm really just going on the naming here, but if I made a repo called "repo_for_medicated" you'd assume I'd put packages *you* wanted in there, correct?

if something made for the community, is managed by a small group of people, in the OSS world, shouldn't these people be (re)reading the cathedral and the bazaar?

Dusty · 2005-06-02 21:25:44

depends how you define community -- maybe its a community of packagers. ;-)

Phrakture, I sincerely think you should apply to be a TU. You're a good packager and would have a lot of good input into the TU process.

Dusty

phrakture · 2005-06-02 21:35:47

Dusty wrote:

depends how you define community -- maybe its a community of packagers. ;-)
Phrakture, I sincerely think you should apply to be a TU. You're a good packager and would have a lot of good input into the TU process.
Dusty

eh, it's alot of work, and I'm not a big fan of being officially recognized - then people start expecting things.... 8)

I'll think about it

xerxes2 · 2005-06-02 21:39:41

I'll back you phrakture, so if you go to germany at linuxtag you could have a badge saying "arch trusted user" ,

and you'll be getting all the chicks there, 8)

medicated · 2005-06-02 22:27:01

I would definitely support you as a TUR(not that my support means anything). You are constantly contributing to the community and I think if you could definitely help the Arch "community" a lot. It doesn't hurt that you seem to share similar interests and concerns with myself.

Regardless, there are some apparent issues in the community. It seems like there's either a lack of communication or just gaps in responsibility. There isn't anyone specific to blame..its a structure thing I guess.

cactus · 2005-06-02 22:28:55

go phrakture..and if you get too busy.. *shrug*
Just build yourself another cyborg.
:twisted:

iphitus · 2005-06-03 00:02:30

The reason there are no votes, is the vote button is hidden, its barely visible!

Logical design would place it near the top, near the name of the package, but it's been tacked on down at the bottom of the page after all the comments. It's not immediately visible.
I spent time *looking* for this mythical vote button when i wanted to vote a package up the other day. It should be more obvious.

iphitus

Dusty · 2005-06-03 02:51:36

good point iphitus... that could go in the aur bug tracker... I don't remember the url to it...

i3839 · 2005-06-03 10:32:14

Just the normal bugtracker, but just make sure you select AUR as project instead of Arch.

dtw · 2005-06-03 10:49:59

I am actually only one vote from become a TU but i'm finding it a bit of a slog to get it - seems I have support from many people but not necessarily the right ones!

I dunno if phrak has started this thread based on the one i just made on the mailing list about popularity vs quality...although if users are suppose to use the AUR vote system to vote for quality it kills my arguement a bit, but then you aren't going to vote quality for a pkg you never use so in this case a vote of quality implies popularity.

As I understand the AUR, yes, those adesklet patches with all those votes SHOULD be in the community repo but, to be honest I can see why no-one wants to maintain them - yes the PKGBUILDS do work but they aren't very good - I guess it is the role of the TU to fix that tho, eh? Dunno...

Should i get accepted, I was going to post a "dibble the TU" charter on the forums with certain "promises" about what I would TRY to do as TU (we all have lives). I personally would like to bring the TUs role within the AUR to the forums to improve the transparency and openess of the process. We rarely see the TUs posting here about changes and happenings in the AUR, do we? They rarely even post on the mailing list about it. Often they are too busy cos they are mostly devs too, which is fair enough.

I also pointed out in my mailing list post that it appears that TU-ship allows you to put your personal "prefered" pkgs straight into community from you old TU repo. I don't see that this is too wrong and in some cases, e.g. neotuli's reiser4 pkgs (very popular and quality), they should go straight in. Maybe the others were added democratically, I am seeking clarification.

I further stated that if I do get a TU position I certainly won't be putting all the stuff in my repo straight into community - according to Archstats barely anyone uses them

Hopefully, if i can get a last vote, I can bring some of this up

.:edited:.

I was very tired when I wrote this the first time. Anyone with first hand experience of the Philippines immigration system would understand! It was easier to get out of the People's Republic of China for goodness sake!

medicated · 2005-06-03 13:11:06

I'm glad to see that you have a strong interest in creating some transparency between the forum users and the TU's. Although I'm not sure how you plan on that working, your optomism is good.

dtw · 2005-06-04 06:33:30

I just plan on actually talking about what happens in the AUR here on the forums!

dtw · 2005-06-04 06:59:55

There seems to be some confusion over whether the vote is for populairty or quality - i think this quote settles it!

AUR guidelines wrote:

Adopting Packages
A TU may adopt any package at any time. But because the TU's time is limited, he should try to only adopt popular packages. The voting mechanism in the AUR allows a TU to quickly gage which packages users want.
If a package receives 25 votes, it may be adopted by a TU.

Note the "may"

medicated · 2005-06-04 07:09:29

Yah, I caught the may also..TU's get to choose.. I guess that makes sense, doesn't it? The problem that I see is a with limited TU's and limited time..it can't be expected that TU's adopt all packages that are popular, although maybe they should.. Its just that currently, a lot of weight and demand is being put on a few skilled people. I'm sure all the popular packages could be adopted, but then quality control could become an issue. I'm waiting to see how this whole AUR thing works out still. I still see a few problems that I"m unsure how we can solve.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-06-02 16:37:34

TUs, AUR, and voting

#2 2005-06-02 17:45:11

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#3 2005-06-02 17:52:38

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#4 2005-06-02 18:19:55

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#5 2005-06-02 18:27:10

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#6 2005-06-02 18:35:40

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#7 2005-06-02 18:39:24

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#8 2005-06-02 19:19:22

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#9 2005-06-02 20:31:07

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#10 2005-06-02 20:38:14

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#11 2005-06-02 20:57:58

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#12 2005-06-02 21:03:16

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#13 2005-06-02 21:25:44

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#14 2005-06-02 21:35:47

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#15 2005-06-02 21:39:41

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#16 2005-06-02 22:27:01

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#17 2005-06-02 22:28:55

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#18 2005-06-03 00:02:30

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#19 2005-06-03 02:51:36

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#20 2005-06-03 10:32:14

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#21 2005-06-03 10:49:59

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#22 2005-06-03 13:11:06

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#23 2005-06-04 06:33:30

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#24 2005-06-04 06:59:55

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

#25 2005-06-04 07:09:29

Re: TUs, AUR, and voting

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