Official Documentation explaining the different repos

hbarnwheeler · 2006-10-04 14:38:45

Hi,

I can't seem to find any official documentation outlining the differences between the different package reppositories. What is the official status of /current, /extra, /testing, and /unstable?

A second, related question: From what I have read, /current and /extra both contain "stable" packages, so why are they split into 2 repos?

Dusty · 2006-10-04 15:14:51

I'm going to answer this in detail here and then copy it into the wiki, since I don't see anything over there. Its a good question.

Most of the repository splits are for historical reasons. Originally, when this distro was used by very few users, there was only one repository, which is now [current] -- It used to be called [official]. This repository basically contains Judd's preferred applications, though that is not quite the case now. It is designed to contain one of each "type" of program -- one DE, one major browser, etc.

There were users back then that didn't like Judd's selection, so since ABS is so easy to use, they created packages of their own. These packages went into a repository called [unofficial], and were maintained by developers other than Judd. Eventually, the two repositories were both considered equally supported by the developers, so the names [official] and [unoficial] didn't apply anymore. They were renamed to [current] and [extra] aronud version 0.5. The repositories are now pretty much equal in the eyes of the developers and the community, but [current] has some differences, the main one being that release snapshots are taken only of [current]. This repository still gives a complete linux system, but it may not be the linux system you want.

Now, sometime around 0.5 or 0.6, they found there were a lot of packages that the developers didn't want to maintain. One of the developers (Xentac) set up the "Trusted User Repositories", which were basically unofficial repositories in which trusted users could place packages they have created. There was a [staging] repository where packages could be promoted into the official repositories by one of the Arch Linux developers, but other than this, the developers and trusted users were more or less distinct.

This worked for a while, but not when trusted users got bored with their repositories and not when untrusted users wanted to share their own packages. This led to the development of the AUR. The TUs were conglomerated into a more closely knit group, and they now collectively maintain the [community] repository. The Trusted Users are still a separate group from the Arch Linux developers, and there isn't a lot of communication between them. However, popular packages are still promoted from [community] to [extra] on occasion. The AUR also supports allowing untrusted users to submit PKGBUILDs for other users to use if they wish. These packages are unsupported, and the packages are sometimes called the [unsupported] repository, though since no binary packages are distributed, unsupported isn't really a repository. Trusted users can adopt packages from unsupported into [community] at their discretion, whether it is because the package is popular or because they are interested in maintaining it.

That leaves [unstable] and [testing]. These are both official repositories maintained by the Arch Linux Developers. [unstable] contains versions of packages that are in [current] or [extra], but as implied by the name, they are unstable packages. Specifically, these are development releases as specified by the original program developers. [unstable] usually only contains packages if the development version of a package has become popular for some reason, for example because the stable version is hopelessly out of date or the unstable version has some groundbreaking changes that a lot of users seem interested in testing.

[testing] is the repository where the developers release packages that will eventually go into [current] or [extra], but which are likely to cause a lot of grief for users on installation. This can happen when major packages like KDE and Gnome have made massive changes, when the internal structure of a package has changed a lot and when a package release such as a popular library has a big impact on other packages.

There are also [release] repositories for each release. These are mostly for historical purposes, and are snapshots of the [current] repository when the release are made.

Hope this helps, I'm going to wikify this shortly.

Dusty

Dusty · 2006-10-04 15:22:47

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The … positories

Somebody please go through it and link to other relevant pages like Arch Linux, AUR, ABS, etc. Also if they would go through some other pages and link back to this one it would be healthy for the wiki. I have to get to work now.

Dusty

hbarnwheeler · 2006-10-04 16:28:40

Wow, thanks a lot for the info Dusty. I am currently preparing to switch to Arch and have had nothing but timely and helpful responses in this forum. I think I am really going to like this distro.

phrakture · 2006-10-04 16:34:34

Woah Dusty... impressive.

toxic · 2006-10-04 18:36:25

Nice, you've added some historical perspectives to the repos, and it was a healty read for the lot of us who haven't been around since the start. Good reading.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-10-04 14:38:45

Official Documentation explaining the different repos

#2 2006-10-04 15:14:51

Re: Official Documentation explaining the different repos

#3 2006-10-04 15:22:47

Re: Official Documentation explaining the different repos

#4 2006-10-04 16:28:40

Re: Official Documentation explaining the different repos

#5 2006-10-04 16:34:34

Re: Official Documentation explaining the different repos

#6 2006-10-04 18:36:25

Re: Official Documentation explaining the different repos

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