Arch Linux

myles

Member

Registered: 2011-10-06

Posts: 40

How do I handle dependency version vs current version in the AUR

Hi,

I am maintaining some packages in the AUR for a project (whose main target is Ubuntu).  Some of these packages are required, at a specific version, in order to satisfy dependencies of the main package.  These dependency packages are usually not the most recent versions available and so become flagged as 'out of date' by our diligent comrades who would like to use the most recent version for other purposes, unrelated to the main project that I am interested in.  It would be very adventurous to attempt to maintain all packages at their bleeding edge versions and still get the main package to work reliably.

How do I handle this?  I could maintain two versions of each dependency package; say the main project is called MAIN, and needs version 0.9 of package DEP, but the latest version of DEP is 1.0, I could have packages called:

OPTION 1
------------

MAIN        <-- has "depends( DEP-0.9)" in the PKGBUILD
DEP-0.9
DEP

or I could have

OPTION 2
------------

MAIN        <-- has "depends( DEP-MAIN)" in the PKGBUILD
DEP-MAIN <-- is always the version needed by the currrent version of MAIN, currently version 0.9
DEP           <-- is always the latest version, currently 1.0

or

MAIN
DEP-1.0
DEP

etc.

Actually, now that I have written it out, OPTION 2 looks like the winner.
Please would you give your opinions or quote some wiki that I have missed.  Thanks.

mcmillan

Member

Registered: 2006-04-06

Posts: 737

Re: How do I handle dependency version vs current version in the AUR

I think it depends a bit on whether people might be interested in the old version for other reasons. If so option 1 may be better as it identifies what the version is. If there it's unlikely anybody would be looking for the older version without them being looking for whatever the main program is I might agree option 2 makes sense.

myles

Member

Registered: 2011-10-06

Posts: 40

Re: How do I handle dependency version vs current version in the AUR

mcmillan, Thank for your input and I see your point but I think it is unlikely that someone would expect to find a PKGBUILD for an older version in the AUR as it generally only has the most recent versions.  I think someone may expect to find an up-to-date PKGBUILD that could then be modified to build an earlier version.

Also, I found in the Arch Packaging Standards it says that:

\quote
Package versions should be the same as the version released by the author...
\unquote

which favours Option 2 also.