Arch Linux

alexmatos

Member

From: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Registered: 2007-08-06

Posts: 124

Some questions regarding best practices while updating packages to AUR

Hello, all! I've been an Arch user for quite some time and had never had the need to build things from source or creating packages. However, when I started to use XCircuit (http://opencircuitdesign.com/xcircuit/) more frequently things changed a bit. There's a version of XCircuit in the community repository, but it's the [extremely] stable one (3.4.30), that doesn't provide many new cool features (such as better LaTeX integration, which is crucial for me). I had been building the "development" -- I'm putting it in quotes because it's carefully made -- release (3.6.143) from source for personal use, but this was very anti-practical.

So I decided to create a PKGBUILD to make the building process less painfull. I did it and it was surprisingly easy! The result was just great and I thought: "why not share this with others?".

Well, my questions are:

  * Should I upload this package to AUR as 'xcircuit' or as something like 'xcircuit-devel'?
  * I've read AUR Guidelines (http://aur.archlinux.org/guidelines.html), and it says "Make sure the package is useful". So, do you think this is useful?
  * As there's already a XCircuit package in the repositories, would be better to ask to the mantainer to update it?

Here's the PKGBUILD (it's pretty simple), just in case anyone wants it:

# Contributor: Alex Tercete <alextercete at gmail.com>

pkgname=xcircuit-devel
pkgver=3.6.143
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="A program for drawing publishable-quality electrical circuit schematic diagrams (development version)"
arch=('i686')
url="http://opencircuitdesign.com/xcircuit/"
depends=('python' 'tcl' 'tk')
license=('GPL')
source=(http://opencircuitdesign.com/xcircuit/archive/xcircuit-3.6.143.tgz)
md5sums=('c173f313313abc65b07915b0bed29d17')

build() {
    cd ${startdir}/src/xcircuit-${pkgver}
    aclocal
    autoconf        # Ensure that configure runs right
    automake
    ./configure --prefix=/usr
    make || return 1
    make DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg install
}

Last edited by alexmatos (2008-11-26 20:43:08)

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Some questions regarding best practices while updating packages to AUR

General Arch policy is to package the stable upstream version, so that's what the current AUR maintainer is doing. Get in touch with him/her if you like, but he/she may perfer to stick with the stable version. If you want to submit your package, adding -devel to the name is the right way to go.

You will need to use the conflicts= and provides= directives in your PKGBUILD - check the man page for details.

alexmatos

Member

From: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Registered: 2007-08-06

Posts: 124

Re: Some questions regarding best practices while updating packages to AUR

General Arch policy is to package the stable upstream version, so that's what the current AUR maintainer is doing. Get in touch with him/her if you like, but he/she may perfer to stick with the stable version. If you want to submit your package, adding -devel to the name is the right way to go.

You will need to use the conflicts= and provides= directives in your PKGBUILD - check the man page for details.

Thanks for the response, tomk! I'll do what you suggested! Also, 'conflicts=' and 'provides=' sounds very important in my case.

giovanni

Developer

From: Livorno, Italy

Registered: 2005-04-07

Posts: 68

Re: Some questions regarding best practices while updating packages to AUR

I'm the maintainer of the xcircuit package in the community repo.
General Arch policy is to package the stable upstream version, so that's what I'm doing.
If you want the 3.6.143 development version, feel free to submit a xcircuit-devel package in AUR.

---

Arch Linux forever
AUR & Pacman Italian Translations

alexmatos

Member

From: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Registered: 2007-08-06

Posts: 124

Re: Some questions regarding best practices while updating packages to AUR

I'm the maintainer of the xcircuit package in the community repo.
General Arch policy is to package the stable upstream version, so that's what I'm doing.
If you want the 3.6.143 development version, feel free to submit a xcircuit-devel package in AUR.

Thanks a lot for the response! I'll do that tonight!

EDIT:
Done! http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=21851

People willing to test it and give feedback are welcome to do so.

Thanks again to tomk and voidnull for the support provided.

Last edited by alexmatos (2008-11-27 21:20:44)