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#1 2018-07-03 12:14:50

zebulon
Member
Registered: 2008-10-20
Posts: 349

Query about arm support in AUR PKGBUILDs

Hi,

I am maintaining a few wifi adapter drivers on AUR, and an external user asked me to become co-maintainer for the arm architecture. I think I upset him because I suggested it would be preferable to host his package on the Archlinuxarm project, as suggested by the FAQ and a few documentation pages. What is the guidance for this?

Further to this, he provided me with a patched version of the driver on Google drive. I am uncomfortable with this, and said he should (as for the x86_64 bit version) provide the patches in Github/Gitlab on the vanilla version of the vendor's code. The x86_64 has been patched for kernel version support, but we can trace the changes. But I think this could be managed, as long he proposes patches for arm to my Github repo code.

So what is the policy here?

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#2 2018-07-03 12:21:32

progandy
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Registered: 2012-05-17
Posts: 5,184

Re: Query about arm support in AUR PKGBUILDs

I think it is no problem to add arm to an aur package if it is in addition to x86_64 support and it gets tested.

As for the patch format or google drive sources, that is your decision as the primary maintainer. If the patches for arm are small, you might even be able to carry them in the AUR I think. The patches must not break x86_64, though. If necessary, only apply them for arm builds.


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#3 2018-07-03 12:28:05

Trilby
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Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,449
Website

Re: Query about arm support in AUR PKGBUILDs

zebulon wrote:

I suggested it would be preferable to host his package on the Archlinuxarm project, as suggested by the FAQ and a few documentation pages.

I'm not sure I understand this - which FAQ and documentation pages are you referring to?  I don't believe archlinuxarm has it's own version of the AUR.  The AUR is just build instructions, and if a package builds and functions on arm architectures it is not only allowed but established practice to list those as well.

If you don't have any interest in testing whether it works on arm, then there really is no expectation that you should, but listing additional architectures to x86_64 in AUR PKGBUILDs is certainly welcome.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#4 2018-07-03 13:05:45

zebulon
Member
Registered: 2008-10-20
Posts: 349

Re: Query about arm support in AUR PKGBUILDs

I was mentioning https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fr … RM_CPUs.3F and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ca … chitecture which explicitely mention Archlinuxarm. Would be useful to annotate the AUR wiki page about this then.

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#5 2018-07-03 14:52:00

eschwartz
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Registered: 2014-08-08
Posts: 4,097

Re: Query about arm support in AUR PKGBUILDs

Trilby wrote:
zebulon wrote:

I suggested it would be preferable to host his package on the Archlinuxarm project, as suggested by the FAQ and a few documentation pages.

I'm not sure I understand this - which FAQ and documentation pages are you referring to?  I don't believe archlinuxarm has it's own version of the AUR.  The AUR is just build instructions, and if a package builds and functions on arm architectures it is not only allowed but established practice to list those as well.

"established practice" is putting it a little strongly. Most source code things just need --ignorearch which ARM users should be familiar with. Most packages don't list it, and it's not remotely uncommon for people to ask for those arches and be told "sorry, no".

It is known to happen, though, yes.

If you don't have any interest in testing whether it works on arm, then there really is no expectation that you should, but listing additional architectures to x86_64 in AUR PKGBUILDs is certainly welcome.

Yeah, if you happen to be interested in testing whether it works on ARM then feel free, but there is absolutely no requirement that you do.

Standard operating procedures are to provide the package for all possible officially supported architectures (though, back when we had two, not everything might be able to build on i686, "impossible" is a reasonable excuse not to).

Anything else is strictly optional and left to the maintainer's discretion. It is neither right nor wrong to do so.

That being said, some AUR maintainers do list ARM architectures, either because they run on ARM, or they know other people do and are okay depending on that. Some prebuilt proprietary binaries come with prebuilt ARM binaries, in which case it seems obvious this will work. big_smile
Some other maintainers will refuse, either on principle, or because they don't feel confident in declaring support.

The only package I personally list ARM for, is pacman-git. I have a high expectation this should work roll and it needs some tweaking to the {makepkg,pacman}.conf for proper use, so I went out of my way to do this after a user requested it.

Last edited by eschwartz (2018-07-03 14:57:35)


Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

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#6 2018-07-03 15:15:39

Trilby
Inspector Parrot
Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,449
Website

Re: Query about arm support in AUR PKGBUILDs

Eschwartz wrote:

Standard operating procedures are to provide the package for all possible officially supported architectures

True, but this strikes me as a bit odd, perhaps disengenous even.  It's like a "multiple" choice question with only one option: all possible officially supported architectures?  If it doesn't work on x86_64 it doesn't include any supported architecture and shouldn't be in the AUR; if it does, then it supports all possible supported architectures.  If there is any purpose in the arch variable at all in a PKGBUILD, it is to allow for things other than in addition to x86_64.

Last edited by Trilby (2018-07-03 15:27:49)


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#7 2018-07-03 16:07:28

eschwartz
Fellow
Registered: 2014-08-08
Posts: 4,097

Re: Query about arm support in AUR PKGBUILDs

This was maybe less confusing when archlinux.org supported multiple arches...

Anyway, IMHO (don't take this as official consensus but it definitely seems to be in accord with what we currently don't take issue with) if something supports all *possible* supported arches, but that "possible" equals 0 and then ARM gets tacked on, that fulfills my expectations. It's a multiple choice question where "0" is a reasonable answer in some cases.

As long as you *try* to support x86_64, you pass the eschwartz acceptability test and have my unofficial blessing even if it ends up only being for ARM.

I would be annoyed if people uploaded packages that only listed ARM, when x86_64 should work fine too...
I would not be annoyed if it only worked for ARM, so that is all that was listed.

I would be vastly annoyed, if it lists x86_64 but is only intended for Manjaro. We *like* Arch Linux ARM and would like to encourage people to use it, so we tend to be looser about enforcing rules like "no packages that have utterly zero purpose on actual Arch Linux" and "no derivatives are supported", but, quite obviously, derivatives that do not just port over to other CPU architectures do not get the same forgiving attitude.


Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

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