Arch Linux

smsteward92

Member

Registered: 2021-10-31

Posts: 6

Why are XMonad and XMobar out of date?

This really isn't an issue persay, just more of a general question/discussion for anyone who might know.

I've noticed that the XMonad, XMonad-contrib, and XMobar packages from the standard Arch repositories are quite out of date. The latest version of XMonad (and XMonad-contrib) from the its GitHub page is 0.17.0, whereas the latest version in the Arch repos is 0.15-175 for xmonad and 0.16-155 for xmonad-contrib. Similar for XMobar: the latest version on the GitHub page is 0.42, whereas the latest version in the Arch repos is 0.39-98. Based on the changelogs for xmonad and xmobar, the Arch version of xmonad is over 3 years old (version 0.15 was released in September, 2018) and the Arch version of xmobar is 7 months old (version 0.39 was released in August, 2021).

It seems like xmonad, xmobar, and the Haskell files they depend on are updated in the Arch repos multiple times per week, and given what I know about Arch package naming conventions, xmonad version 0.15 has seen 175 updates for the same version number (hence the 0.15-175), and xmobar has seen 98 updates to the same version number.

My question is: why are these packages so out of date in the Arch repos, when the source has been available on GitHub so months/years at this point? Is there any backporting on the part of the Arch devs? I know that Arch uses dynamically linked Haskell libraries, which, to the Haskell devs, is a bad choice to have made. Is this part of the reason the packages are so out of date? And why are there so many updates to the Haskell files, xmonad, and xmobar if the version number hasn't been bumped in months/years?

Again, this really isn't an issue, since I don't have any problems with the packages. But as someone who uses a rolling release distro for a reason, I am curious to know why these packages are so out of date compared to upstream. I would appreciate any insight anyone might have, and thanks in advance!

stepnem

Member

Registered: 2019-08-04

Posts: 18

Re: Why are XMonad and XMobar out of date?

You could have found answers or at least clues by looking at the usual places:

Bug tracker:
https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?st … &project=5

Wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Haskell

There was a thread on r/archlinux (or was it r/haskell? I think the former) few years back where Felix Yan (the maintainer of Haskell infrastructure on Arch) explained more background about his approach.

smsteward92

Member

Registered: 2021-10-31

Posts: 6

Re: Why are XMonad and XMobar out of date?

I've seen the bugs on the bug tracker, read the Haskell wiki article before, and even seen the thread from the maintainer as to why Arch decided to go with dynamically linked packages vs the suggested statically linked packages. One of the xmonad bugs was even closed by a maintainer for being "not a bug", which is fair since it isn't a bug in the typical sense. But the wiki article, bug reports, and the thread by the maintainer on reddit do nothing to actually answer the question of why we're using packages that are months and years old. They keep pushing updates to the packages without incrementing the version number, and that's what I don't understand.

I guess my question is: what is actually stopping the Arch devs from updating to the latest stable version, and why do we constantly get Haskell and xmonad/xmobar package updates with no actual version bump, especially with Xmonad which is nearly 3 years out of date version-wise. Other window managers like Qtile which I used before Xmonad, and full desktop environments like GNOME and KDE get updates to the latest stable version nearly instantly, so what makes Xmonad an outlier?

All of this is just to satisfy my genuine curiosity and nothing more.

stepnem

Member

Registered: 2019-08-04

Posts: 18

Re: Why are XMonad and XMobar out of date?

They keep pushing updates to the packages without incrementing the version number, and that's what I don't understand.

AFAIUI, the updates are just rebuilds (necessitated by dynamic linkage) whenever some of the dependencies are updated.

I guess my question is: what is actually stopping the Arch devs from updating to the latest stable version, and why do we constantly get Haskell and xmonad/xmobar package updates with no actual version bump, especially with Xmonad which is nearly 3 years out of date version-wise.

I thought, when quickly looking at the bugs, that it was a problem with different GHC versions required by upstream, but looking again, that does not seem to be the case. In any event, you might have better chances of getting a specific answer asking the maintainer directly rather than here.

Last edited by stepnem (2022-03-16 17:26:10)

doct0rhu

Member

Registered: 2022-03-19

Posts: 2

Re: Why are XMonad and XMobar out of date?

`xmonad` and `xmoand-contrib` were updated to 0.17 after they were released. But somehow they were reverted to old version in last week. I cannot understand why.

Last edited by doct0rhu (2022-03-19 01:19:45)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,729

Re: Why are XMonad and XMobar out of date?

`xmonad` and `xmoand-contrib` were updated to 0.17 after they were released. But somehow they were reverted to old version in last week. I cannot understand why.

No, it wasn't.

https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-c … onad/trunk

doct0rhu

Member

Registered: 2022-03-19

Posts: 2

Re: Why are XMonad and XMobar out of date?

`xmonad` and `xmoand-contrib` were updated to 0.17 after they were released. But somehow they were reverted to old version in last week. I cannot understand why.

No, it wasn't.

https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-c … onad/trunk

Yep you're right.
I've just checked it and found that I've manually updated the version requirement in my cabal file.