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dtw

Forum Fellow

From: UK

Registered: 2004-08-03

Posts: 4,439

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What criteria decides when things get added to extra?

No offense to dp, an ever enthusiastic member of the team, but some the recent additions to extra have me puzzled.

for example - ivman.  barely a few months old - poorly supported and poorly documented

things just seem to get added if they seem to be do something good regardless of the actual quality of the app

sarah31

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From: Middle of Canada

Registered: 2002-08-20

Posts: 2,975

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Re: What criteria decides when things get added to extra?

when I did packaging I had he advantage that the majority of what I was adding was contributed or requested. I added some stuff based on personal use but not much and most of it is probably more widely used than when I introduced it.

Now I am not always so sure if that sort of guideline is followed. I have seen many packages added that I really wonder how much they were demanded and how widely they would be used. But whatever. I am not opposed to obscure packages being added but why should they be added before popular ones that have been sitting in incoming or TURs?

I look forward to the responses.

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Blaasvis

Member

Registered: 2003-01-17

Posts: 467

Re: What criteria decides when things get added to extra?

we can't really see what packages are popular... not yet
soon the AUR system will be released and it will implement a voting system so we can see what packages are really wanted.

Also i maintain 200+ packages adding more will take more time maintaining them, i only add packages that are new to the gnome desktop env...
so i won't any new packages gnome is a big enough beast on his own
My time is also limited things like school and World of Warcraft eat time too.

So the conclude it:
I only add packages that are needed for the gnome DE.

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Dusty

Schwag Merchant

From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2004-01-18

Posts: 5,986

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Re: What criteria decides when things get added to extra?

As I understand it, each package maintainer sets his or her own criteria for what gets added. There aren't really any guidelines.

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dp

Member

From: Zürich, Switzerland

Registered: 2003-05-27

Posts: 3,378

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Re: What criteria decides when things get added to extra?

No offense to dp, an ever enthusiastic member of the team, but some the recent additions to extra have me puzzled.

if you don't know what they are for, don't use them.

for example - ivman.  barely a few months old - poorly supported and poorly documented

poorly supported and documented, yes, but it works fine if you figure out how to make it do the things you need it to do. by the way: the website of ivman has a wiki that is to be enhanced by any user having found something usefull about it ;-)

things just seem to get added if they seem to be do something good regardless of the actual quality of the app

you want an app go get ISO 9000 to be included to the repos? some apps are not yet perfect but untill there are no alternatives for them and some people want this functionability, we need to use them, despite their quality. if you can show me a ivman-altenative that is of better quality, i will drop ivman imediately.

about the addition of pkgs to extra: as i understand it, every pkgmaintainer has his/her own rules on adding pkgs to extra. for me there are this main rules that must be set that i take a pkg to extra:

- it does something usefull
- i can test this functionability in some minutes (ideally, i use the app frequently or even daily)
- the licence is "open" enough

further i look on this details:

- size of the pkg <-> upload-time acceptable for my connection
- compile-time acceptable (under 8h on my old 266mhz machine?)
- is it used by at least 2 persons out there in the community
- does it affect other pkgs?

maybe i forgot a criterium in this list, but this is more or less the way i choose apps to take to extra and maintain.

some apps that i use daily i see absolutely no problem maintaining. in my local repo there are ~200 pkgs that are not published and i do not plan to publish them before not seeing any mentioning in the forums. one such example is "acct" that was in my local repo untill it was published in the bootchart thread and i saw that more people might use it. then i put it to extra

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dtw

Forum Fellow

From: UK

Registered: 2004-08-03

Posts: 4,439

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Re: What criteria decides when things get added to extra?

fair enough - i guess that answers that one!