[2019-03-13 23:46:10 +0100] Morten Linderud via arch-dev-public:
There is a *lot* of small tools people have written over the years that resides in bin/ directories which could be useful for more people. We also have several such tools on soyuz, where sogrep was added to devtools this week.
I have been thinking it could be great to have a simple `contrib` repository where every team member has commit access. This could work as a staging area for tools we would like to promote to `devtools` later on.
We could maybe sort this into directories for its purpose: * packaging * security * devops * testing * bugwrangler * misc
Tools that can be added here is the `ch` scripts from Bluewind, and the pkg-* tools eli has created. I also have some tools to look for pkgname in archweb, check them out from svn and check them against a nvchecker file.
This would hopefully give us a space where we can experiment with new maintainer tools in a collaborative manner. I'd love to hear some feedback or thoughs on this!
I think it's a great idea but it needs a solid maintainer. Without a clear leader it's (probably) going to be a free for all and we'll drown under bikeshedding issues within a month. But of course that doesn't mean we'd lose anything trying anyhow. Among other things, I'd personally like to see the repo maintainer enforce sensible and consistent naming for the tools, preferring longer, explicit names over shorter ones. For instance, I'm sure many of us have one-letter scripts and if we contribute them all there's bound to be collisions along with the problem of not knowing at first glance what each tool does. We could maintain a bash alias file containing everyone's favorite nickname for each tool. My two cents. -- Gaetan