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#1 2021-03-12 00:31:07

bananabrain
Member
From: England
Registered: 2010-05-07
Posts: 78

Question about out-of-date AUR packages

A possibly naive question:

Is the idea to flag an AUR package out of date when it will no longer build on an up to date system, or simply when newer upstream source becomes available?

It seems to me the former would be quite worthwhile and the latter an example of whinging at a maintainer who's likely to get around to the job at some point anyway.


Not trying to ruffle any feathers. Just wondering if the "out of date" logitechmediaserver will compile and run on my machine ok.

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#2 2021-03-12 00:36:48

Trilby
Inspector Parrot
Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,447
Website

Re: Question about out-of-date AUR packages

The out-of-date flag is for packages that are ... wait for it ... out of date.  Nothing else.

Of course, they are completely worthless now because users end up spamming away at them anytime they're unhappy because there is a problem in the PKGBUILD, or there is a problem on their own system, or they run out of their favorite flavor of soda at the groccery store.

So you should only use it when there is a new upstream source available.  And you should comment or contact the maintainer if there is some other issue.  And other people should follow this advice as well.  But they will not.


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

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#3 2021-03-12 00:38:31

Slithery
Administrator
From: Norfolk, UK
Registered: 2013-12-01
Posts: 5,776

Re: Question about out-of-date AUR packages

bananabrain wrote:

...or simply when newer upstream source becomes available?

^ This.

Unless of course if it's a VCS package ending in -{git,cvs,svn,hg,darcs,bz} etc. in which case the PKGBUILD only needs updating when the build process changes...
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VC … guidelines


No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

aur - dotfiles

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#4 2021-03-12 00:45:10

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

Re: Question about out-of-date AUR packages

Trilby wrote:

Of course, they are completely worthless now because users end up spamming away at them anytime they're unhappy because there is a problem in the PKGBUILD, or there is a problem on their own system, or they run out of their favorite flavor of soda at the groccery store.

So you should only use it when there is a new upstream source available.  And you should comment or contact the maintainer if there is some other issue.  And other people should follow this advice as well.  But they will not.

In practice, they tend to skip right over flagging it out of date and going right to the... wait for it...

Deletion requests.

Yup, you heard that correctly. Not the orphan requests, the *deletion* requests.


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

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#5 2021-03-12 00:56:17

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: Question about out-of-date AUR packages

bananabrain wrote:

Just wondering if the "out of date" logitechmediaserver will compile and run on my machine ok.

It's running fine on mine. And the OOD flag is wrong: the last *stable* release was 8.1.1 https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver/tags

# edit: and to second Trilby's point: way too many people seem incapable of reading the pinned notes, wiki pages, or any of the other documentation that is supposed to govern how things work on the AUR. Much like the rest of Arch, really...

Last edited by jasonwryan (2021-03-12 00:58:38)


Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

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#6 2021-03-12 01:50:58

bananabrain
Member
From: England
Registered: 2010-05-07
Posts: 78

Re: Question about out-of-date AUR packages

Well that was an entertaining read...   ;-)

Thanks for the replies guys, I think I'm with it now.

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