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folf

Member

From: NL

Registered: 2026-02-06

Posts: 3

Website

[SOLVED] Claiming AUR package with the same name as a deleted one

Hi all, I'm in the process of attempting to publish a package to the AUR, however, when I cloned the pkgbase I noticed that rather than an empty repository there was already a previous package in it. This package has been deleted long ago and the last commit was in 2015.

I've since found a similar situation and related commit logs but I'm still somewhat confused on how to proceed. It seems like the new package was force pushed on top but the history was not erased, and I'm not sure whether this is regular AUR git behavior or whether there is something special I need to do.

What is the standard procedure here? Am I supposed to find a never used package name, or is there a specific way to go about claiming the previous package's repo?

Last edited by folf (2026-02-07 14:59:32)

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,723

Re: [SOLVED] Claiming AUR package with the same name as a deleted one

It seems like the new package was force pushed on top but the history was not erased, and I'm not sure whether this is regular AUR git behavior or whether there is something special I need to do.

regular behaviour

Make sure you clone using an ssh url like

ssh://aur@aur.archlinux.org/foo.git

(The aur interface only allows pushing over ssh )

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folf

Member

From: NL

Registered: 2026-02-06

Posts: 3

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Claiming AUR package with the same name as a deleted one

I'm still not exactly sure on what to do. I attempted to force push but it seems like that is not allowed. Looking at the commit I linked, it somehow has no parent. How was that achieved?

seth

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From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 72,816

Re: [SOLVED] Claiming AUR package with the same name as a deleted one

Looking at the commit I linked, it somehow has no parent.

Hein?
https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/ … per&ofs=50 shows three commits, the first two being the ones https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=217976 complains about, the last one the subsequent transition to the current package.
Force pushing is evil and in this context (when you cannot blindly trust the random AUR contributors to not abuse it) not acceptable.

You could send a request to the AUR mailing list to delete the repo, but I'm frankly not sure where the problem is here - the git history will simply show that at some point this package was something different.
Logging what happened is kinda the nature of git and why we do "git revert" and not "I make random changes and then rewrite history with a force push" (or as a personal alias to steer me away from that: "git trump"…)

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folf

Member

From: NL

Registered: 2026-02-06

Posts: 3

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Claiming AUR package with the same name as a deleted one

Looking at the commit I linked, it somehow has no parent.

Hein?
https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/ … per&ofs=50 shows three commits, the first two being the ones https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=217976 complains about, the last one the subsequent transition to the current package.
Force pushing is evil and in this context (when you cannot blindly trust the random AUR contributors to not abuse it) not acceptable.

You could send a request to the AUR mailing list to delete the repo, but I'm frankly not sure where the problem is here - the git history will simply show that at some point this package was something different.
Logging what happened is kinda the nature of git and why we do "git revert" and not "I make random changes and then rewrite history with a force push" (or as a personal alias to steer me away from that: "git trump"…)

It was/is not my intention to delete the history. I suppose I could just replace the old files normally in a commit, but I was under the impression that wasn't the right thing to do either. When I look at the commit I linked (the transition to the current package ae78ab47), it shows no parent and the addition of the new files with no deletions of the previous ones, even though they are still kept in the prev commit history. That's where my confusion stems from.
Edit: I had another long at it and realized I completely missed the merge commit down the line, my bad.

Last edited by folf (2026-02-07 14:58:37)