Why metapackages not allowed in AUR, while they are in official repos?

dreieck · 2025-10-19 17:40:44

Ahoj,

recently, many of my packages were flagged for deletion (by @oech3), most of them were metapackages.

The deletion requests were actually approved and the packages deleted.

There are quite a few meta packages around in the official repositories, e.g. 'kde-games-meta' and 'vlc-plugins-all. The second even introduced recently.

Since also official repositories have meta packages, and recently even got introduced at least one new, I hereby want to raise the question why they are not wanted in the AUR.

Specifically, e.g. following of my meta packages (they were more) were recently deleted:

* 'freetz-ng-devel'
* 'marble-restricted-maps'
* 'idos-timetable-data-chaps-trains-cz'

Regards!

Last edited by dreieck (2025-10-19 17:41:09)

mpan · 2025-10-19 18:54:03

See this similar thread: Clarification on policy regarding "configuration only" packages.

Metapackages fall into the group of packages that don’t build anything. They only express author’s private opinion on what packages to have installed.

seth · 2025-10-19 19:37:49

https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/li … 6HOK7ACWL/

oech3 wrote:

This should be part of makedeps

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/frit … rmware-git - the idea being that the dependent packages shall be listed there as make dependencies, instead of hiding them behind some other AUR package
I didn't lookup the other packages, but metapackages are essentially for user convenience which isn't necessary in the above case.

dreieck · 2025-10-19 20:05:58

So, 'grapheneos-devel' and 'aosp-devel' should also be deleted?

What defines "user convenience" exactly? So the packages 'kde-games-meta' and 'vlc-plugins-all' fall under "user convenience"?

Regards!

seth · 2025-10-19 20:19:11

Convenience: Spares me typing eg. all of https://archlinux.org/packages/core/any/base-devel/
This is not required for packages that just list make dependencies of another package because the other package could just list those (I still don't have to enter all of those into pacman -S)

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/grapheneos-devel does not seem to be the make dependency for any other package (ie. no grapheneos is packages in the AUR) but "what you need to do android stuff™" and aosp-devel likewise is listed as "Metapackage to pull all dependencies required to build modern Android" but also subset of three specific android flavors of the same nature (if it doesn't serve any independent purpose one might argue that the list should be merged into those, but that doesn't even seem to be the case)

Whether or not there should™ be AUR packages that describe an android development environment I can't say.

morsmortium · 2025-10-19 21:41:24

I have two metapackages, the same person filled deletion requests for both.
For one the person recommended to use an official metapackage, after they discovered it does not exist, the deletion request was removed.
For the second metapackage deletion request you can read the reply here: https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/li … CDYYD6H64/

Request #76429 has been Rejected by Muflone [1]:
stop these requests to delete all the metapackages

Arch Linux

#1 2025-10-19 17:40:44

Why metapackages not allowed in AUR, while they are in official repos?

#2 2025-10-19 18:54:03

Re: Why metapackages not allowed in AUR, while they are in official repos?

#3 2025-10-19 19:37:49

Re: Why metapackages not allowed in AUR, while they are in official repos?

#4 2025-10-19 20:05:58

Re: Why metapackages not allowed in AUR, while they are in official repos?

#5 2025-10-19 20:19:11

Re: Why metapackages not allowed in AUR, while they are in official repos?

#6 2025-10-19 21:41:24

Re: Why metapackages not allowed in AUR, while they are in official repos?

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