Should makepkg be able to use git bundles?

Tripple_Trabble · 2025-10-18 10:48:01

Recently i have to travel a lot by train where the internet connection is not good and stable for downloads at best.
After searching the web for an alternative to the git clone which would reset on network drop i found git bundles.

git bundles allow to download a git archive as a file instead cloning it via git. (I know that for this a bundle has to exist and is not created on the fly when downloading.)
Together with wget i can now download a git repository as an archive. On disconnect, wget allows me to resume without having to re-download the whole repo.

This is most useful when trying to download large repos like the linux.git AUR package.

I made a partial proof of concept and found the usability of makepkg to fetch git source with bundles to drastically increase on slow and unreliable connections. I am still working on it to integrate it into the rest of the build and not only the -S option.
For anyone interested here you can find my commits and changes to use git bundles with wget. (I have not figured out how to upload a patch file to the topic.)
This patch does nothing except than the absolute necessary changes to make this work.

My question is:

Is there any interest in being able to use git bundles with makepkg?
And if yes, where should i go to? Should I post it on the mailing list or on GitLab? I have not contributed outside of GitHub Merge requests to any projects so i am kind of lost of where to go.

I would appreciate any pointers in which direction i should go.

Best Regards
Lars

Last edited by Tripple_Trabble (2025-10-18 11:33:04)

gromit · 2025-10-18 12:56:10

If this is something that you want to contribute you could do so in https://gitlab.archlinux.org/pacman/pacman.
But I think it's a good idea to discuss your feature request and experience from the proof of concept first in an issue

Allan · 2025-10-18 22:34:26

I think this is the kind of thing libmkapekg-dropins was designed for:

https://gitlab.archlinux.org/pacman/libmakepkg-dropins

It does seem you need to edit more files than a single dropin to get it implemented. So would need to work with the pacman team to get that fixed.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-10-18 10:48:01

Should makepkg be able to use git bundles?

#2 2025-10-18 12:56:10

Re: Should makepkg be able to use git bundles?

#3 2025-10-18 22:34:26

Re: Should makepkg be able to use git bundles?

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