Arch Linux

Rorschach

Member

From: Ankh-Morpork

Registered: 2008-11-07

Posts: 131

New user gives feedback to AUR

Hi,
I'm pretty new to Arch (three days now) and start to understand the tools. I just wanna give you my impression so far about AUR.

Short after I installed Arch I wanted some of my favorite apps having installed and noticed they are not in the repos. So I checked the AUR-system which also looks pretty great. But I have seen a big problem. I checked vidalia and gringotts which are both great tools I use daily and the later one also has some patches by me like the trayicon in it.

But in AUR both are outdated. So I simply wanted to update them but there's no possibilty to do so! I looked in the AUR-FAQ which says I should do the following:
* marking as outdated
* waiting if the maintainer does something, if not:
* emailing the maintainer
* waiting if the maintainer does something, if not:
* emailing a TU
* waiting if the TU does something, if not:
* emailing the next TU
* ...
* ...

I mean comeone, that's no situation isn't it ?? I mean if I wait just a week between each step we have 3-4 weeks until a package can be updated (in the case the original maintainer lost his interest on this). That's imo far too long!

Why not allowing parallel branches of an application? Why not allowing one to steal the packages of another one if the package is marked outdate for more than 3-7 days?

I would really like to take over the packaging of vidalia and gringotts so why are you making it so hard for me? I mean I have no problem packaging them for others but making myself the trouble of the steps named in the FAQ... I dunno but this sounds pretty painfull for me.

Are you all okay with this situation at the moment?

SamC

Member

From: Calgary

Registered: 2008-05-13

Posts: 611

Website

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

Why don't you just updating the PKGBUILD, and maybe post that into this section of the forum?

Rorschach

Member

From: Ankh-Morpork

Registered: 2008-11-07

Posts: 131

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

I did updated them for both vidalia and gringotts and posted them in the comments to the package in AUR. You think it's better to post them in the forum?

Last edited by Rorschach (2008-11-10 19:08:25)

SamC

Member

From: Calgary

Registered: 2008-05-13

Posts: 611

Website

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

Not sure... I haven't really had any issues. If it's a big deal, you might be more likely to get a response in the forum. Personally, I think it's easy enough to update the PKGBUILD that the delay between updates on the package in the AUR isn't an issue.

Rorschach

Member

From: Ankh-Morpork

Registered: 2008-11-07

Posts: 131

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

Well vidalia isn't updated for months now by the maintainer, so I think it is an issue.

creslin

Member

Registered: 2008-10-04

Posts: 241

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

If it is that urgent for you, email the AUR-General Mailing List requesting that the package be orphaned.  If the the package has been outdated for a long time and the maintainer has been MIA during that time, a TU will orphan the package for you.

But aside from that, it's really not that big of a deal.  Packages from [unsupported] are not precompiled anyway.. you have to compile it whether it's your own PKGBUILD or the maintainer's.  Since you are capable of writing your own functional PKGBUILDs, why is this such a big issue to you?

Last edited by creslin (2008-11-10 19:48:30)

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Rorschach

Member

From: Ankh-Morpork

Registered: 2008-11-07

Posts: 131

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

Well the thing is that a better maintained package in AUR is having better chances of getting more votes and thus getting faster into the community repository. Or what do you think?

Stefan Husmann

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-07

Posts: 955

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

* marking as outdated
* waiting if the maintainer  does something, if not:
* emailing the maintainer
* waiting if the maintainer does something, if not:
* emailing a TU
* waiting if the TU does something, if not:
* emailing the next TU
* ...
* ...

Well, the list is quite long, but in practice it should be much shorter. Marking as outdated is only neede if there is noone who did it already. The Archers are quite quick in doing so unless it is a very rarely used package.

You should not email a TU directly or use forums, use aur-general mailing list for that. So the loop

foreach TU
do...

is not needed.

Have a look at AUR comment page to se when was first submission and last change at the package. Post your betterworking PKGBUILD there.

Please do not submit another PKGBUILD to AUR just because of version bumps. They will be deleted.

Last edited by Stefan Husmann (2008-11-11 02:48:10)

fukawi2

Forum Moderator

From: .vic.au

Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 4,705

Website

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

I agree that it can be annoying when a package is outdated and you want / need a more recent version, but it's fairly rare, and IMHO it's not that bad to update the PKGBUILD myself and then install it.

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jacko

Member

Registered: 2007-11-23

Posts: 838

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

The AUR is user generated content. no guaranties in any form.

That being said, you are a user, update the PKGBUILD, mark it as outdated and post to mailing list. Arch dev's are pretty lenient when it comes to matters like these. You wanna help, they are all for it.

Rorschach

Member

From: Ankh-Morpork

Registered: 2008-11-07

Posts: 131

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

Okay I see I will go the the mailinglist for these issues.

Maybe one who has more experience with AUR and it's principles should update the AUR Q&A which reads at the moment:

For starters you can flag it out-of-date. If it stays out of date for an extended amount of time the best thing to do is email the maintainer. If after no response from the maintainer you could have a TU orphan the PKGBUILD if you're willing to maintain it yourself

Last edited by Rorschach (2008-11-11 11:36:18)

Stefan Husmann

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-07

Posts: 955

Re: New user gives feedback to AUR

done