RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

singenbale · 2011-03-31 17:40:46

Thanks xyne for all your contributions.
When i first installed arch linux i had many difficulties and remember watching youtube videos showing the installation process and in most of them powerpill was the first thing that would be installed after Arch. Thats how i came to know about it and used it up until now. It 'GREATLY' increased download speed of packages. I will miss it.
Also +1 for stickying this as new archers may get lost while following unofficial installation guides. Consider it for their sake!

karol · 2011-03-31 17:46:54

singenbale wrote:

Also +1 for stickying this as new archers may get lost while following unofficial installation guides. Consider it for their sake!

Which wiki pages need updating?

jasonwryan · 2011-03-31 17:54:25

singenbale wrote:

Also +1 for stickying this as new archers may get lost while following unofficial installation guides. Consider it for their sake!

Anyone who chooses an unofficial installation guide over the Arch documentation is already lost...

Pyruzan · 2011-03-31 19:17:42

karol wrote:

@Pyruzan
mfaridi has no internet connection at home ...

Hey karol,

Yep, you're right, with no internet connection you can't even update the packages database and thus can't get urls. I shouldn't have quoted his post!

Thousands pair of eyes are staring at Xyne's hands now!! Such popular and commonly used projects should not depend on a single person imho, because we all have our problems and one may not be able to maintain several projects for some time.

Last edited by Pyruzan (2011-03-31 23:37:04)

ataraxia · 2011-03-31 19:28:17

Well, there's always the open-source answer to these things depending on only one person - someone else can always pick up Xyne's code and maintain it. Even if the rewrite gets done and released, wouldn't it be nice to have more than one option?

Really, people. Nobody took your powerpill and bauerbill away. They just need a little work, and you can keep running them with the new pacman...

schneida · 2011-04-01 20:04:58

He, what a pity to see that!! Thank you very much Xyne for your really good work to make Arch the best distribution available.

I'm particularly interested in something like makerepo. Is there anything planned for the future, or should I start writing my own version?

singenbale · 2011-04-02 10:06:47

karol wrote:

singenbale wrote:
Also +1 for stickying this as new archers may get lost while following unofficial installation guides. Consider it for their sake!
Which wiki pages need updating?

The wiki is great as it is, no doubt about it.

jasonwryan wrote:

singenbale wrote:
Also +1 for stickying this as new archers may get lost while following unofficial installation guides. Consider it for their sake!
Anyone who chooses an unofficial installation guide over the Arch documentation is already lost...

You never choose an unofficial guide 'over' the Arch documentation. That is indeed correct. But there does come a time when you need some sort of additional info. If that info happens to be incorrect at multiple places on the internet due to some recent event of which few people are aware, i think it is better to highlight it in the best way possible by all those concerned. If you think otherwise its fine with me as i have expressed what i feel to be right. i can give my own example but I already feel like i have started a discussion which does not fit in this post.
BOT, I already miss powerpill.

EDIT: @karol: Aah, now i get what you meant. I think that was the best way to do it.
EDIT2:@jasonwryan: my bad.

Last edited by singenbale (2011-04-02 10:24:17)

mfaridi · 2011-04-03 07:55:10

I wish in Arch Linux we can find someone , can continue support powerpill and perl-xynr-arch and help other guys like me .

Last edited by mfaridi (2011-04-03 08:18:00)

jelly · 2011-04-03 12:31:57

mfaridi wrote:

I wish in Arch Linux we can find someone , can continue support powerpill and perl-xynr-arch and help other guys like me .

learn perl and hack it, that's how FOSS works.

Pyruzan · 2011-04-03 22:08:31

jelly wrote:

mfaridi wrote:
I wish in Arch Linux we can find someone , can continue support powerpill and perl-xynr-arch and help other guys like me .
learn perl and hack it, that's how FOSS works.

That's actually more of an advantage, feature, ideal or goal of FOSS rather than "how it works!"

This way that you talk, means you must know programming in order to use FOSS or any moment it may be gone leaving you alone in the dark and the only luminosity is the knowledge of programming, which may actually be true but isn't the reality.

This would also mean FOSS is only for programmers or geeks not the ordinary people!

ngoonee · 2011-04-03 22:32:02

Pyruzan wrote:

jelly wrote:
mfaridi wrote:
I wish in Arch Linux we can find someone , can continue support powerpill and perl-xynr-arch and help other guys like me .
learn perl and hack it, that's how FOSS works.
That's actually more of an advantage, feature, ideal or goal of FOSS rather than "how it works!"
This way that you talk, means you must know programming in order to use FOSS or any moment it may be gone leaving you alone in the dark and the only luminosity is the knowledge of programming, which may actually be true but isn't the reality.
This would also mean FOSS is only for programmers or geeks not the ordinary people!

That IS how it works. If you cannot program and the programmers decide its not working, then you're stuck.

FOSS is the ultimate meritocracy, you're welcome to USE, but users do not have the right to expect that any given piece of software will still work over 10 years (or will do exactly what they want). Of course non-programmers can contribute (documentation etc), but in the end cars don't run without mechanics, nor does software run without programmers.

Fortunately for those who can't program, there's a lot of quality software to be had that's backed by multiple programmers (firefox, for example, isn't likely to go away anytime soon). One-man projects tend to be a bit more short-lived though (even when the man is Xyne). Deal with it, that's how things are.

P.S. - what's the difference between 'true' and 'reality'?

falconindy · 2011-04-03 22:42:16

ngoonee wrote:

P.S. - what's the difference between 'true' and 'reality'?

true always exits without error.

ngoonee · 2011-04-03 22:43:24

falconindy wrote:

ngoonee wrote:
P.S. - what's the difference between 'true' and 'reality'?
true always exits without error.

alias true reality

Pyruzan · 2011-04-04 01:26:43

ngoonee wrote:

That IS how it works. If you cannot program and the programmers decide its not working, then you're stuck.
FOSS is the ultimate meritocracy, you're welcome to USE, but users do not have the right to expect that any given piece of software will still work over 10 years (or will do exactly what they want). Of course non-programmers can contribute (documentation etc), but in the end cars don't run without mechanics, nor does software run without programmers.
Fortunately for those who can't program, there's a lot of quality software to be had that's backed by multiple programmers (firefox, for example, isn't likely to go away anytime soon). One-man projects tend to be a bit more short-lived though (even when the man is Xyne). Deal with it, that's how things are.
P.S. - what's the difference between 'true' and 'reality'?

First the difference between truth and reality; you can google the exact "difference between truth and reality" term and get your answer. I give you an example:

Reality and Truth are two words that are often misunderstood to convey the same meaning but strictly speaking they are not so. Reality is an existent fact whereas truth is an established fact. There is lot of difference between an existent fact and an established fact.
Reality has been existent ever since the beginning of the universe. On the other hand truth is something that you have proved. Truth is the exactness of a fact. Hence it is something you try to establish. This is the main difference between reality and truth ...

You didn't get what I meant, I agree with everything you said but that's not what I'm talking about! There are always alternatives in FOSS world, popular and commonly used softwares often have more than 1 developer or there are forks of such but unsupported by the original developer programs. It's an inevitable fact, this is the nature of FOSS (which is somehow equivalent to "how it works" but in a positive and optimistic way!) . So it certainly is not as scary as you describe it! and one who knows no programming can happily use FOSS with no worry!

In case of powepill; I have my own alternative for now (of course powerpill was a lot easier and more efficient to use). If there is a need for it then be sure sooner or later Xyne or someone else would provide a replacement or maintain the existing code.

Xyne · 2011-04-04 04:52:48

For those requesting a powerpill replacement, take a look at pacman2aria2 and powerpill-light. If the default powerpill-light script doesn't suit your needs, copy it and modify it until it does.

As for comments about someone else continuing support of perl-xyne-arch, I don't think it's worth it. The codebase is too messy, mostly due to my noobish choices along the way, including the use of Perl, which was a vestige of Powerpill's origin and the fact that I really only knew Perl at the time. I am confident that my replacement will be much better, both in terms of versatility and code correctness, but I really had hoped that perl-xyne-arch would make it until I was ready to release something.

Basically, it feels like perl-xyne-arch is a old, broken down car that would need a lot of money (read: time) to fix up. I don't want to spend that money on perl-xyne-arch because I'm saving up for a new car (the replacement). Until I get it, we're all stuck taking the bus, unless someone else fixes up the old car or buys their own. *ok, let me stop the analogy here before I start throwing in taxis (powerpill-light) etc*

jelly wrote:

mfaridi wrote:
I wish in Arch Linux we can find someone , can continue support powerpill and perl-xynr-arch and help other guys like me .
learn perl and hack it, that's how FOSS works.

I suspect that mfaridi's tone has been misconstrued due to the language barrier, plus I think it's understandable in his case to be a bit upset that one of his most used apps has suddenly disappeared.

While I agree that there should be a bit more of a DIY spirit in the FOSS community, not everyone has time to learn everything. It's as if you were to ask a physician for a diagnosis and he were to reply that you should go to the library and figure it out yourself.

Besides, the first place to start learning programming is definitely not perl-xyne-arch.

ngoonee · 2011-04-04 05:22:41

Xyne wrote:

Besides, the first place to start learning programming is definitely not perl-xyne-arch.

I see what you did there! Best trick in the book - throw an unsolvable programming puzzle down in front of the masses =p

Xyne · 2011-04-04 05:45:41

ngoonee wrote:

Xyne wrote:
Besides, the first place to start learning programming is definitely not perl-xyne-arch.
I see what you did there! Best trick in the book - throw an unsolvable programming puzzle down in front of the masses =p

It's only unsolvable because you would break your keyboard from smashing your head on it before you finished.

Really though, there isn't that much that needs to be changed to make it work. It's just the database interactions. I actually had something that did work, but it was so slow due to the tarring that it was unacceptable. The proper way to do this is with alpm bindings, which is what I will use in the replacement.

Incidentally, Remy is currently working on Python3 bindings (pyalpm, on the AUR). If someone really wants to start working on something, that would be a good place to start.

Zom · 2011-04-04 07:14:06

I guess it's pretty redundant at this point, but I'm looking forward to the replacement for powerpill. I also quite liked the feature that showed a diff of what's changed in the database since the last sync.

schneida · 2011-04-13 19:52:04

In case anybody used to use makerepo for maintaining a custom repository with AUR packages and is now looking for a good replacement: makerepo (and perl-xyne-arch which it depends upon) are still useable as far as I've tried. Just download the PKGBUILDs from here (http://xyne.archlinux.ca/old_projects/) and install it.

The only thing that you have to take care of is changing the version string in perl-xyne-arch to "pkgver=2011.03.10.6" and update md5sums.

I'm well aware that this is not a solution but at least a temporary workaround until I find time to write something myself or I find some ready-made useful scripts (anyone with suggestions is very welcome!)

Be warned: I've only tried makerepo with a couple of AUR packages and it worked fine for me, that doesn't mean it won't break your system. Also, it is probably only working because the "download from AUR, build it and add to repository" is independent of any pacman actions...

brando56894 · 2011-04-15 01:02:00

I was confused when I tried to find new versions of powerpill/bauerbill and couldnt find them anywhere since I had to remove them before to upgrade pacman. Bauerbill was an awesome tool but it always seemed a little confusing to me since there were so many option. I'll be waiting to see what amazing app(s) you'll bestow upon us in the near future!

MindTooth · 2011-05-14 19:04:00

May I suggest that maybe you could open-source the code over at Github?

I'm pretty sure that you can get this users account for your use: https://github.com/Xyne

Sad to see you leave, but as always, real life comes first

karol · 2011-05-14 19:17:37

MindTooth wrote:

May I suggest that maybe you could open-source the code over at Github?
I'm pretty sure that you can get this users account for your use: https://github.com/Xyne
Sad to see you leave, but as always, real life comes first

In case you want the code even outside github: http://xyne.archlinux.ca/old_projects/

Xyem · 2011-06-14 16:57:37

Xyne wrote:

mostly due to my noobish choices along the way, including the use of Perl, which was a vestige of Powerpill's origin

May I ask what in particular about Perl made it a bad choice to use? Is it just the situation, the language itself..?

EDIT: Not going to try and convince you that you were wrong, genuinely interested in just knowing your reasoning behind that statement

Last edited by Xyem (2011-06-14 16:58:33)

Xyne · 2011-06-15 21:34:58

Xyem wrote:

Xyne wrote:
mostly due to my noobish choices along the way, including the use of Perl, which was a vestige of Powerpill's origin
May I ask what in particular about Perl made it a bad choice to use? Is it just the situation, the language itself..?
EDIT: Not going to try and convince you that you were wrong, genuinely interested in just knowing your reasoning behind that statement

Let me start by saying that I like Perl (Perl 5 at least). It's the first language that I learned and I think it's great for some purposes. Perl is versatile and it can be used to do just about anything if done properly, so what follows is in no way a statement to the effect that Perl is incapable.

To me, it just feels messy to write something big in Perl. Maybe it's a vestige of how I learned it, by hacking together scripts to do what I wanted. I didn't have a structured approach to learning or coding Perl so maybe I still view it through noobish eyes, but it just doesn't feel like the right tool for the job. In particular, I've always felt that objects in Perl are an ugly kludge, even if you can do just about everything with them.

Given the similarity of Perl and Python, I would now choose Python for a larger project (for something that didn't require the speed of a compiled language, and even then bindings remain an option). It feels cleaner, more modular, and I appreciate the standard libraries (sure, you can find everything on CPAN, but not everyone has everything installed and it just increases the list of dependencies).

Summary: it's just a feeling that it's not the right tool for the job, even if it can get it done.

Xyne · 2015-12-06 15:55:35

For anyone still missing bauerbill, it's back.

Closing...

Arch Linux

#101 2011-03-31 17:40:46

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#102 2011-03-31 17:46:54

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#103 2011-03-31 17:54:25

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#104 2011-03-31 19:17:42

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#105 2011-03-31 19:28:17

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#106 2011-04-01 20:04:58

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#107 2011-04-02 10:06:47

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#108 2011-04-03 07:55:10

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#109 2011-04-03 12:31:57

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#110 2011-04-03 22:08:31

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#111 2011-04-03 22:32:02

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#112 2011-04-03 22:42:16

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#113 2011-04-03 22:43:24

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#114 2011-04-04 01:26:43

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#115 2011-04-04 04:52:48

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#116 2011-04-04 05:22:41

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#117 2011-04-04 05:45:41

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#118 2011-04-04 07:14:06

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#119 2011-04-13 19:52:04

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#120 2011-04-15 01:02:00

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#121 2011-05-14 19:04:00

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#122 2011-05-14 19:17:37

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#123 2011-06-14 16:57:37

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#124 2011-06-15 21:34:58

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

#125 2015-12-06 15:55:35

Re: RIP perl-xyne-arch, powerpill, bauerbill, etc

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