December 2019 - Arch-dev-public - lists.archlinux.org

[arch-dev-public] Mkinitcpio replacement with Dracut
by Giancarlo Razzolini 19 Feb '21

19 Feb '21

Hi All, Recently, Dave announced his intention to step down as mkinitcpio maintainer. I have been handling a few things on it, made some small changes to our mkinitcpio-busybox [0], closed a few old bugs, while also made sure some of the other bug reports are still valid. [1] I have been testing a few patches to mkinitcpio for a while to fix those bugs, but last week Dave and I had a discussion on IRC and we agreed that we could spend better time contributing somewhere else than keeping working with mkinitcpio. Currently mkinitcpio cannot boot from NFS properly, mknitcpio-nfs-utils [2] uses very old code. Even though ipconfig works, it has several drawbacks compared to using more modern tools. Not to mention that we have two use cases for mkinitcpio, which are base and systemd enabled initramfs. Even though we use by default our base enabled initramfs, we have to support systemd related issues and we have to keep developing our systemd hooks. I have been looking into dracut for some time now, I copied some stuff from them on a few of my own scripts and they also have an actual test suite, that we currently can't use on Arch, but I plan to change that. With this in mind, I have packaged dracut for Arch and put it on Extra [3]. I have been using a dracut initramfs for a while now to boot my encrypted partition. Surprisingly, I only had to create a small patch to one of the dm-crypt module scripts [4] In this initial phase I want to ask as many of you to test this as a replacement to mkinitcpio in your setups, as many as possible, and in as many scenarios as possible. We will probably have to keep both packages on our repos for a long time, but once we are confident it's a good fit, we can replace mkinitcpio on our iso and base, so new installs get dracut by default. Please, drop in your comments as well. Regards, Giancarlo Razzolini [0] https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/commit/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=pac… [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?string=mkinitcpio&project=0 [2] https://git.archlinux.org/mkinitcpio-nfs-utils.git/ [3] https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/dracut/ [4] https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/0001-90crypt-Cha…

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[arch-dev-public] Looking for an Arch ISO maintainer
by Jelle van der Waa 30 Mar '20

30 Mar '20

Hi all, Gerardo has stepped down as Arch ISO maintainer, which makes archiso unmaintained. I've asked Pierres if he was interested in maintaining the project and he is willing to do bug fixes when required but no major maintenance. Which means that we are looking for a new maintainer :-) To be completely honest, I am not sure what maintenance archiso requires but there are a few things I would love to see: - Proper CI / automated testing of the archiso - Reproducible archiso (patches on the mailing list) [1] - Support secure boot [2] - Accessibility improvements (patches available on the mailing list) [3] Please reply if you are interested in becoming an archiso maintainer, so far Alad has shown interested. [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/63683?project=6 [2] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53864?project=6 [3] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/63166?project=6 -- Jelle van der Waa

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[arch-dev-public] Can anyone take nvidia-390xx?
by Sven-Hendrik Haase 23 Feb '20

23 Feb '20

I don't run nvidia-390xx on any of my devices. I would appreciate it if somebody could take those drivers. I will continue maintaining the mainline nvidia package.

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[arch-dev-public] cleanup dead Xorg packages
by Andreas Radke 06 Jan '20

06 Jan '20

I've created a bug[1] to follow a long overdue Xorg cleanup to drop legacy and dead code from our packages. This will require fixing makedepends in a 2nd step. I will do the most work over the next days/weeks. This all didn't fit well into a single ToDo list. If you find more really dead Xorg packages add it please to the bug tracker with a link to its removal. Use the mailing list for further discussion if needed when you think a certain feature isn't widely used and should be dropped as well. -Andy [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/64892

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[arch-dev-public] soyuz (pkgbuild.com) server move to homedir.archlinux.org
by Sven-Hendrik Haase 01 Jan '20

01 Jan '20

Hi all, I set up a new Hetzner VPS that is going to become our new homedir/public_html server available to all TUs and Devs like soyuz was. We decided to decommission soyuz and put the public_html stuff on its own server for security reasons, to cut costs, and so that we can compartmentalize further. The server uses a Hetzner Cloud Volume which we can scale if we want but for now, it's 100GiB of zstd-compressed btrfs. If possible, we'd like to keep it at this size for the time being. You can host your own repos there if you want and that's fine. Please talk to us beforehand if you see yourself exhausting the volume with what you want to do. If you had stuff hosted in the public_html of soyuz, I'd ask you to transfer stuff over to the new box which is already reachable at the names pkgbuild.com (you'll get an SSH error because of this) and homedir.archlinux.org. Please check if you can throw away some old stuff/junk that you might not necessarily need on the new server. This new box is *not for building*. That's what dragon is for. Please only put documents/files onto the new pkgbuild.com that you actually want people to be able to access publicly. The box has no building facilities and you get no sudo'd commands. soyuz is going to be decommissioned no sooner than 2020-01-01 but do not expect it to hang around for long after that. We will not transfer any files for you from soyuz. In other words: All data not explicitly transferred by you will be destroyed after 2020-01-01. Please bring up any problems you might have with this new server on the arch-devops list or IRC (#archlinux-devops). Enjoy, Sven

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[arch-dev-public] zstd rollout complete
by Robin Broda 01 Jan '20

01 Jan '20

Hello everyone, We have just tested and released everything necessary for zstd packages in our repos. Right now, the updated devtools is still in [testing], but our preliminary testing shows that nothing immediately combusted on release, so I'm confident. Once it has left testing, packages built with devtools will automatically use zstd with the correct options. There is no intervention necessary, this should be an essentially transparent process. Happy packaging and greetings from 36c3. -- Rob (coderobe) O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org

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[arch-dev-public] RFC: (devtools) Changing default compression method to zstd
by Robin Broda 31 Dec '19

31 Dec '19

Hello all, in the past few weeks, some TUs and Developers have compared different compression algorithms to potentially replace the default compression method used in devtools. The current method is `xz -c -z -` which is single-threaded and rather slow, so we are looking to replace it with something faster. Multithreaded xz has come up in the past, and was quickly dismissed due to edge cases that would end up with packages being unreproducible on different machines - namely, xz -T0 -- the method that automatically determines the amount of threads -- produces different results when the amount of cores in a system is == 1: $ taskset -c 1 xz -c -z - -T0 < test > test.xz && sha256sum test.xz fe95a1af78304ae4be508e071f6697296e52b625fba95fca5622757779633d90 test.xz $ taskset -c 1,2 xz -c -z - -T0 < test > test.xz && sha256sum test.xz 3b2c520eda654de19c5fc02ea1d850e142ae24e1246edcce82e90bd690d18f99 test.xz $ taskset -c 1,2,3 xz -c -z - -T0 < test > test.xz && sha256sum test.xz 3b2c520eda654de19c5fc02ea1d850e142ae24e1246edcce82e90bd690d18f99 test.xz With this mail, i propose to switch to `zstd` instead (https://github.com/facebook/zstd) zstd does *not* exhibit this issue, and anthraxx has asked for some clarifications (https://github.com/facebook/zstd/issues/999#issuecomment-474114799) - just in case. The response is that zstd is generally friendly to reproducible builds. After some testing with heftig, I ran some additional benchmarks on our new build host 'dragon' to determine the appropriate compression level. Here are the results: (sorry for the wide mail :b) Compressor Package Name Size (MiB) Comp. Size (MiB) Ratio Time (mm:ss) Max. RSS in MiB Decomp. Time (mm:ss) Decomp. RSS in MiB xz -c -z - cuda 3038,58 1316,93 43,34% 19:03.44 95,32 1:19.74 10,18 zstd -c -T0 -18 - cuda 3038,58 1375,41 45,26% 01:12.50 2648,93 0:04.46 10,70 zstd -c -T0 -19 - cuda 3038,58 1371,94 45,15% 01:34.13 3401,67 0:04.47 10,73 zstd -c -T0 -20 - cuda 3038,58 1371,94 45,15% 01:34.34 3416,90 0:04.46 10,79 zstd -c -T0 -21 - cuda 3038,58 1371,94 45,15% 01:31.60 3414,14 0:04.46 10,79 xz -c -z - gcc 135,54 33,11 24,43% 00:54.54 95,34 0:02.59 10,11 zstd -c -T0 -18 - gcc 135,54 35,87 26,47% 00:12.37 419,23 0:00.23 10,77 zstd -c -T0 -19 - gcc 135,54 35,66 26,31% 00:15.76 578,99 0:00.24 10,66 zstd -c -T0 -20 - gcc 135,54 35,66 26,31% 00:16.36 579,11 0:00.25 10,75 zstd -c -T0 -21 - gcc 135,54 35,66 26,31% 00:16.18 579,01 0:00.25 10,46 xz -c -z - go 484,10 122,10 25,22% 03:19.11 95,35 0:08.78 10,16 zstd -c -T0 -18 - go 484,10 132,69 27,41% 00:15.40 1402,99 0:00.80 10,80 zstd -c -T0 -19 - go 484,10 131,84 27,23% 00:19.74 1914,07 0:00.79 10,78 zstd -c -T0 -20 - go 484,10 131,84 27,23% 00:20.19 1914,11 0:00.77 10,72 zstd -c -T0 -21 - go 484,10 131,84 27,23% 00:20.08 1914,09 0:00.79 10,78 xz -c -z - intellij-idea-community-edition 772,46 384,37 49,76% 04:53.01 95,31 0:28.69 10,18 zstd -c -T0 -18 - intellij-idea-community-edition 772,46 392,44 50,80% 00:27.10 2341,02 0:00.91 10,63 zstd -c -T0 -19 - intellij-idea-community-edition 772,46 391,04 50,62% 00:37.09 3107,97 0:00.93 10,47 zstd -c -T0 -20 - intellij-idea-community-edition 772,46 391,04 50,62% 00:34.43 3107,87 0:00.93 10,70 zstd -c -T0 -21 - intellij-idea-community-edition 772,46 391,04 50,62% 00:35.45 3104,94 0:00.94 10,64 xz -c -z - linux 80,15 70,66 88,17% 00:31.27 95,35 0:03.85 10,11 zstd -c -T0 -18 - linux 80,15 70,22 87,62% 00:07.48 299,30 0:00.05 10,64 zstd -c -T0 -19 - linux 80,15 70,18 87,56% 00:09.32 395,32 0:00.05 10,72 zstd -c -T0 -20 - linux 80,15 70,18 87,56% 00:08.88 395,23 0:00.06 10,57 zstd -c -T0 -21 - linux 80,15 70,18 87,56% 00:08.91 395,28 0:00.05 10,71 xz -c -z - linux-headers 103,85 17,02 16,39% 00:42.24 95,35 0:01.45 10,15 zstd -c -T0 -18 - linux-headers 103,85 18,92 18,22% 00:12.68 320,98 0:00.16 10,74 zstd -c -T0 -19 - linux-headers 103,85 18,88 18,18% 00:16.36 448,98 0:00.17 10,63 zstd -c -T0 -20 - linux-headers 103,85 18,88 18,18% 00:16.26 448,99 0:00.16 10,77 zstd -c -T0 -21 - linux-headers 103,85 18,88 18,18% 00:16.39 448,97 0:00.16 10,72 xz -c -z - tensorflow 303,10 55,58 18,34% 01:59.56 95,40 0:04.78 10,27 zstd -c -T0 -18 - tensorflow 303,10 61,83 20,40% 00:15.99 856,98 0:00.47 10,64 zstd -c -T0 -19 - tensorflow 303,10 61,49 20,29% 00:21.01 1176,74 0:00.50 10,68 zstd -c -T0 -20 - tensorflow 303,10 61,49 20,29% 00:21.11 1176,88 0:00.49 10,64 zstd -c -T0 -21 - tensorflow 303,10 61,49 20,29% 00:21.16 1176,89 0:00.50 10,67 This seems to conclude that the ideal zstd level would be `-18`, as anything higher than that has a steep incline in memory usage during compression for negligible gains. We're, however, looking at a minimal increase in package size most of the time. I would consider that a minimal increase only, and a tradeoff we can make - given the incredibly fast decompression. So, TL;DR, the benefits of `zstd -c -T0 -18 -` over `xz -c -z -` are: - Massive speed gain in compression - Massive speed gain in decompression - Stable, reproducible multithreading The speed gain in decompression substantially increases pacman's package installation speed. While the trade-offs would be: - Minimal increase in compressed package size - Increase in memory usage during compression The required changeset is, i think: PKGEXT='.pkg.tar.zst' COMPRESSZST=(zstd -c -T0 -18 -) This change requires a new pacman release, as as of writing this, zstd support is in master but hasn't landed in a release yet. Judging by recent IRC chats in -tu and -devops, I think that many TUs and Devs already think this is a good move. This mail is a general proposal to gather opinions on this change and hopefully clear up any misunderstandings or questions regarding this change, before the actual patch is sent. Regards, Rob (coderobe)

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[arch-dev-public] Python 2 modules
by Allan McRae 17 Dec '19

17 Dec '19

Hi all, Python 2 reaches End of Life on 2020-01-01. We currently have >950 python2 modules in the repos. A lot of these are not used by any other package in the repositories. I think we should work towards removing them. Leaving only python2 modules that are really required by other software, highlights what needs worked on to port to python3. Note Fedora is doing a similar removal for F30: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Mass_Python_2_Package_Removal What are opinions on this? Should I make a TODO list? Below is a list of python2 modules that are a dependency for any other package. I did not check makedepends and I did not check recursively to build this list. python2-acme python2-antlr2 python2-anyjson python2-anytree python2-apache-libcloud python2-apispec python2-argcomplete python2-argon2_cffi python2-argparse python2-args python2-arrow python2-aspectlib python2-astor python2-atspi python2-aubio python2-audit python2-augeas python2-autobahn python2-autopep8 python2-backports.lzma python2-basemap python2-betamax-matchers python2-betamax-serializers python2-binary-memcached python2-biopython python2-bitvector python2-blist python2-blosc python2-bluepy python2-bottle python2-bottleneck python2-braintree python2-breathe python2-bsddb python2-btchip python2-btrees python2-cached-property python2-caja python2-cchardet python2-celery python2-chai python2-chameleon python2-characteristic python2-cjkwrap python2-click-log python2-click-threading python2-cloudflare python2-cmarkgfm python2-colander python2-colorclass python2-configargparse python2-construct python2-couchdb python2-cram python2-crayons python2-cryptography-vectors python2-cson python2-cssselect2 python2-cssutils python2-cx_freeze python2-d2to1 python2-daemon python2-daemonize python2-datrie python2-ddt python2-digitalocean python2-discid python2-distutils-extra python2-django python2-dnslib python2-dockerpty python2-docopt python2-docs python2-doublex-expects python2-dpcontracts python2-dropbox python2-editdistance python2-egenix-mx-base python2-elasticsearch-curator python2-email-validator python2-envisage python2-eric python2-ethtool python2-evdev python2-exam python2-exiv2 python2-eyed3 python2-factory-boy python2-fastpbkdf2 python2-faulthandler python2-flake8-blind-except python2-flake8-debugger python2-flaky python2-flask-gravatar python2-flask-htmlmin python2-flask-jwt python2-flask-mail python2-flask-migrate python2-flask-paranoid python2-flask-restful python2-flask-security python2-flask-socketio python2-flask-talisman python2-flask-wtf python2-flexmock python2-flickrapi python2-flup python2-fonttools python2-foolscap python2-fpconst python2-freezegun python2-fs python2-funcy python2-furl python2-fxa python2-gasp python2-gcp-devrel-py-tools python2-gdal python2-gdata python2-genshi python2-genty python2-geoip python2-gevent-websocket python2-gflags python2-gitpython python2-gnupg python2-gnupginterface python2-gnuplot python2-gpgme python2-grequests python2-gtkspellcheck python2-gudev python2-h2 python2-h5py python2-h5py-openmpi python2-hacking python2-harparser python2-helper python2-hexdump python2-hglib python2-httpretty python2-hunter python2-hypothesis python2-i3-py python2-ibm-db-sa python2-icalendar python2-igraph python2-importlib_resources python2-inet_diag python2-invoke python2-iocapture python2-ipdb python2-irc python2-isomd5sum python2-iwlib python2-jieba python2-js2py python2-jsbeautifier python2-json-logger python2-jsonrpclib-pelix python2-kaitaistruct python2-kajiki python2-kaptan python2-keybinder2 python2-keyrings-alt python2-keyutils python2-kitchen python2-kivy python2-klein python2-langdetect python2-language-server python2-lark-parser python2-levenshtein python2-libappindicator python2-libarchive-c python2-libforensic1394 python2-librabbitmq python2-libtmux python2-linux-procfs python2-llfuse python2-logbook python2-logilab-common python2-lttngust python2-m2r python2-magic python2-mamba python2-manhole python2-manuel python2-marisa python2-marshmallow python2-memcached python2-mimerender python2-mockito python2-mongoengine python2-mongomock python2-mpd2 python2-munkres python2-musicbrainz2 python2-mygpoclient python2-mysql-connector python2-nbxmpp python2-ndg-httpsclient python2-neovim python2-netcdf4 python2-netcdf4-openmpi python2-nine python2-nltk python2-nose2 python2-nose-cover3 python2-nose-exclude python2-nose-fixes python2-nose-randomly python2-nose-show-skipped python2-nosexcover python2-oauth2client python2-objgraph python2-olefile python2-openapi-spec-validator python2-openpyxl python2-openstackclient python2-oslo-concurrency python2-oslo-log python2-oslosphinx python2-oslotest python2-ovirt-engine-sdk python2-owslib python2-pacparser python2-pam python2-pandas-datareader python2-pandocfilters python2-parse python2-parsedatetime python2-parsel python2-paste python2-pastedeploy python2-pbkdf2 python2-pdoc python2-peewee python2-perf python2-periphery python2-phonenumbers python2-piexif python2-pifpaf python2-pigar python2-pint python2-pipenv python2-pkgconfig python2-planout python2-plop python2-pmw python2-podcastparser python2-polib python2-poppler python2-positional python2-poster python2-prance python2-prctl python2-pretend python2-priority python2-process-tests python2-profilestats python2-progressbar python2-prometheus_client python2-psycopg2 python2-ptrace python2-pudb python2-pyaes python2-pyalsa python2-pyamf python2-pyaml python2-pyaudio python2-pybluez python2-pychm python2-pycontracts python2-pycosat python2-pycountry python2-pycuda python2-pydbus python2-pydns python2-pydocstyle python2-pydot python2-pyelftools python2-pyftpdlib python2-pygal python2-pygeoip python2-pygit2 python2-pygithub python2-pyglet python2-pygpgme python2-pygraphviz python2-pyicu python2-pyliblo python2-pylibmc python2-pylons-sphinx-themes python2-pymediainfo python2-pynamecheap python2-pynormaliz python2-pyodbc python2-pyopencl python2-pyotp python2-pyqtwebengine python2-pyquery python2-pyro python2-pyrss2gen python2-pyrtf python2-pysaml2 python2-pysendfile python2-pyserial python2-pysimplesoap python2-pysmbc python2-pysnmp python2-pysrt python2-pystemmer python2-pyswip python2-pytables python2-pytddmon python2-pytest-benchmark python2-pytest-cov python2-pytest-django python2-pytest-expect python2-pytest-flake8 python2-pytest-httpbin python2-pytest-isort python2-pytest-localserver python2-pytest-mock python2-pytest-randomly python2-pytest-relaxed python2-pytest-rerunfailures python2-pytest-runner python2-pytest-sugar python2-pytest-timeout python2-pytest-twisted python2-pytest-virtualenv python2-pytest-xdist python2-pytest-xprocess python2-pythondialog python2-pyudev python2-pyusb python2-pywinrm python2-pyxrootd python2-qiniu python2-qpid-proton python2-qrcode python2-qrencode python2-queuelib python2-rangehttpserver python2-rawkit python2-rdflib python2-recommonmark python2-redis python2-rednose python2-repoze.profile python2-requests-credssp python2-requests-file python2-requests-ftp python2-requests-hawk python2-requests-kerberos python2-requests-mock python2-requests-ntlm python2-responses python2-restkit python2-rethinkdb python2-ropper python2-rply python2-rst2pdf python2-salsa20 python2-scapy python2-schedutils python2-scikit-learn python2-scour python2-scripttest python2-scrypt python2-seaborn python2-selenium python2-semantic-version python2-send2trash python2-serpent python2-service_identity python2-setuptools-git python2-setuptools-markdown python2-setuptools-scm python2-shapely python2-signedjson python2-simplebayes python2-snakefood python2-soappy python2-socketio python2-sortedcontainers python2-sparqlwrapper python2-sphinxcontrib-bibtex python2-sphinxcontrib-newsfeed python2-sphinx-testing python2-split python2-sshtunnel python2-statsmodels python2-stopit python2-structlog python2-subunit2sql python2-suds python2-sure python2-swiftclient python2-sword python2-sybil python2-tabulate python2-tagpy python2-tarantool python2-tblib python2-tenacity python2-terminado python2-terminaltables python2-testfixtures python2-testrepository python2-testresources python2-texttable python2-tftpy python2-tlsh python2-toposort python2-tox python2-traitsui python2-transaction python2-treq python2-trustme python2-tweepy python2-twine python2-typogrify python2-ukpostcodeparser python2-uncertainties python2-unicorn python2-unittest-mixins python2-unittest-xml-reporting python2-urwidtrees python2-vcrpy python2-vcversioner python2-venusian python2-vobject python2-webcolors python2-webpy python2-whatever python2-whelk python2-whitenoise python2-wikipedia python2-wsaccel python2-wsgi-intercept python2-wsgiproxy2 python2-wsproto python2-xapp python2-xlrd python2-xlsxwriter python2-xlwt python2-xpybutil python2-yapf python2-yara python2-z3 python2-zbar python2-zconfig python2-zope-annotation python2-zope-configuration python2-zope-copy python2-zope-security python2-zope-testing python2-zope.testing python2-zope-testrunner

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[arch-dev-public] Missing bugtracker assignment emails
by Morten Linderud 16 Dec '19

16 Dec '19

Yo! Andreas Radke has done an impressive amount of bug assignments the past week. But it looks like the assignment emails themselves are not sent correctly and you might not have noticed this. Please look over your bug assignments on the tracker in case you haven't taken a look in a while :) Happy holidays! -- Morten Linderud PGP: 9C02FF419FECBE16

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[arch-dev-public] Proposal: Build a ruleset for new packages and package quality
by Christian Rebischke 12 Dec '19

12 Dec '19

Hello everybody, Due to a longer discussion around alpha and beta packages in our repositories in IRC yesterday, I would like to start a hopefully more constructive discussion around this topic on the ML. Short summary for everybody what happened: I wanted to get caddy2.0.0-beta into [community], people started discussing that we don't ship betas in our repositories and I should either wait or ship the stable caddy v1 release. I don't want to start this discussion around caddy again (I will wait for a stable release). What I want to accomplish with this mail is: 1. find a consensus on rules which packages we allow in our repositories and which don't. 2. find a consensus on rules on violating our rules regarding package requirements. (e.g. What happens when TU/Dev XY violates our package requirements? what is the punishment?) 3. revive the discussion around better PKGBUILD quality (see also Eli's thread about PKGBUILD quality on arch-tu: https://lists.archlinux.org/private/arch-tu/2019-November/000083.html) 4. I would like to have this rules written down somewhere, either in the TU bylaws (in dev bylaws if this exists) or in a new format like "community bylaws" (maybe we could combine this with the question about a new leader). 5. What do we do with the existing beta and alpha packages? Are they granted asylum? Or do we remove them, to be consistent? extra libmspack 1:0.10.1alpha-2 extra qt5-webkit 5.212.0alpha3-6 community d-containers 0.8.0alpha.19-1 extra frozen-bubble 2.2.1beta1-14 extra hddtemp 0.3.beta15.53-1 extra libcaca 0.99.beta19-2 extra tsocks 1.8beta5-8 community hydrogen 1.0.0beta1-1 community lablgtk3 3.0.beta6-2 community modclean 3.0.0beta.1-1 community sdedit 4.2beta8-1 community sniffit 0.3.7.beta-17 community vbindiff 3.0_beta5-1 community wqy-microhei 0.2.0_beta-9 community wqy-microhei-lite 0.2.0_beta-9 6. How do we define stable packages? beta or alpha is just a human made word. I've seen devs who said their "1.0" version is unstable and shouldn't be used in production. Should such a software get packaged? And what about projects who use semantic versioning (the devs said so), but they have a 0.* prefix release? 7. Another topic is a rule about "touching packages of others". In the #archlinux-tu channel we came to the conclusion that TUs or devs should ask the package maintainer before touching another devs/TUs package, how do we want to handle this? Is this the consensus, or are touches without prior question allowed? What do we do if somebody violates our rules? etc 8. A few guys in the IRC pointed me to this guidelines in our wiki: Note: This page is only editable with Wiki-Admin/Dev Permission. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_package_guidelines#Package_versio… My questions to this guidelines: 8.1. under which consensus where this rules defined? Are these rules the result of a developer vote? of a leader decision? Or are they made up by a few persons without consensus. 8.2 I can't find any list about punishments for violations of these rules. 8.3 There is no documentation about our alpha and beta packages. I see that there are exceptions for alpha and betas, but it's not clear for me how these exceptions apply to the packages we have in our repositories. This needs to be documented, otherwise every person could push an alpha package and just 'claim' that one of those exceptions apply for the package and if nobody checks this claim, the package will be in the repository. 9. Do we consider packages, that are build from the latest git tag, as alphas or betas? >> pacman -Ss|grep -E '\+[0-9]+\+g' 10. Do we need to ask software developers in the future if they consider their project stable? It's not clear which versioning schema the devs use, some consider their 0.1 release as unstable, some consider it as stable. Is semantic versioning applied? Do they follow a different schema? 11. What do we do when a package is stable, but the API is unstable? Is the whole package considered unstable? The current guidelines are not clear about APIs, but many users use Arch Linux for software development and maybe rely on stable APIs. Disclaimer: I don't know how we want to find concensus yet (TUs have a transparent vote process, but devs don't have an equivalent for this), therefore I hope for a "final decision" of our still-leader aaron. This topic doesn't need to be decided this year. I am fine with reviving this thread in January or late replies in January. Best regards, Chris

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