Arch Linux

agapito

Member

From: Who cares.

Registered: 2008-11-13

Posts: 641

AUR packages should be removed automatically

Approximately 13% of AUR packages are orphans. There are literally thousands of packages that have not been touched in the last 5 years, probably they cannot currently be built or they are not used by anyone. I don't think this is a good thing and inspires much trust.

In my opinion AUR should automatically remove packages that have been orphaned for 2 years. What do you think?

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Excuse my poor English.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,774

Re: AUR packages should be removed automatically

Nope.
Perhaps if they are orphaned and they won't build.   But I assert, without proof, there are many useful, unmaintained packages that continue to build just fine.

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Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,523

Website

Re: AUR packages should be removed automatically

I'm more concerned with the bots that spam the aur with literally hundreds of broken packages.  They all show as actively maintained, but they're garbage.  I've reported a couple such packages as they affected me in some way - and those packages may be removed, but the bot users are left to go on spamming new garbage packages unchecked.

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

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,664

Re: AUR packages should be removed automatically

I'd disagree. AUR packages aren't trusted by definition so you should know what you sign up for regardless of how maintained something is. And if I run into a tool I want to try out and there's already a PKGBUILD it might be easier to patch it up with a PKGBUILD already present for reference.

Lone_Wolf

Member

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,911

Re: AUR packages should be removed automatically

In 2015 AUR switched from version3 (tarballs) to version 4 (git-based ) . In order to get  a fresh start aur3 was archived and maintainers had to do a fresh upload to get packages in aur4

The aur3 archive is still available on github .

Maybe a similar cleanup would be a good idea ?

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seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,046

Re: AUR packages should be removed automatically

So we're poking people in the eye to see whether they're still alive?
The 2015 incident had a technical background that was used to clean up, but "because we can" is no justification to bug people.

Also

There are literally thousands of packages that have not been touched in the last 5 years, probably they cannot currently be built or they are not used by anyone.

is based on feelings?
There's useful upstream code that hasn't been touched in over two decades - that doesn't mean it doesn't build or is not used. Just that there's no need for change. What about font/artwork packages? Do we expect them to be cfrequently updated? Git packages?
Afaics one either runs a conclusive test over the AUR and builds everything to see whether there're issues, ping the maintainers and then act on silence or relies on users strolling along and reporting the package as broken.

I don't think this is a good thing and inspires much trust.

Trust in what?
As V1del pointed out, if one trusts AUR packages, one does it wrong.

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