2007/10/14, Roman Kyrylych <roman.kyrylych@gmail.com>:

2007/10/14, Thomas Bächler <thomas@archlinux.org>:

...

Pierre Schmitz schrieb:

...

But the border between [extra] and [community] does not seem to be that sharp. Does [extra] only include the most important and essential packages? Is [community] only a playground and a repo full of alpha releases?

Defining [extra] in a clear way should make it easier to cleanup this repo, too. We still have a lot of unmaintained or outdated packages.

To me this is easy: The core/extra/unstable repositories are maintained by the smaller group of Archlinux Developers, the community repository is maintained by the larger and less strictly controlled group of Trusted Users.

This is the only disctinction IMO. Everything we don't want to maintain due to lack of time and manpower will be handled by the TUs, who can grow their numbers easily.

Yes, but developers also can (and some of them do) maintain packages in community.

IMHO Core and Extra should contain essential packages that are used by majority of users. But if some developer use some very specific niche package - it shouldn't be in Extra, IMHO. Won't be Community or even Unsupported enought for such packages? Core/Extra means "official and well-supported" for most users. While Community/Unsupported is kind of "50 text editors more and also that nice Gtk theme". That's my opinion. IMVHO all games except those that are official part of Gnome and KDE package sets and also rarely used scientific packages would fit Community well, while can still be maintained by developers. -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007, Damir Perisa wrote:

Sunday 14 October 2007, Roman Kyrylych wrote: | IMHO Core and Extra should contain essential packages that are | used by majority of users. | But if some developer use some very specific niche package - it | shouldn't be in Extra, IMHO. Won't be Community or even | Unsupported enought for such packages?

there is no such thing as a humble opinion

if it is an essential pkg for a niche (i.e. molecular biology) and a dev is using it, then why not offering it officially?

| Core/Extra means "official and well-supported" for most users.

exactly

| While Community/Unsupported is kind of "50 text editors more and | also that nice Gtk theme".

that happens to be, yes.

| IMVHO all games except those that are official part of Gnome and | KDE package sets and also rarely used scientific packages would | fit Community well, while can still be maintained by developers.

stop being humble :) ... try being human :D

why distinguish between the ones from gnome and kde and the rest?

"rarely used scientific packages" - can you compare the usage of such a pkg to e.g. scribus? please show me the numbers of stats of the last year in the arch community, and i will immediately agree to your statement.

I don't know what people have against games or scientific packages. The whole niche thing is subjective. One could argue that some core packages are niche packages like screen which is probably used by a minority of users. What about the wireless drivers? Tom has asked for testers for wlan-ng and no one came forward. We didn't concluded that it's a niche packages that should be moved to community. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:38:08 +0300 "Roman Kyrylych" <roman.kyrylych@gmail.com> wrote:

IMVHO all games except those that are official part of Gnome and KDE package sets and also rarely used scientific packages would fit Community well, while can still be maintained by developers.

As a point of note, I've always been interested in maintaining games, however my radeon card makes me unhappy due to the inability to play them well. XD I'm hoping that will change once AMD releases drivers this month for fglrx - in which case I'd be more than happy to pick up all orphaned games. I enjoy a good game. Whether I maintain them in community or extra I suppose doesn't matter, but yeah, since people were showing interest in maintaining Sci packages, I figured I'd weigh in with my equally "niche" games. :) -- Travis

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007, Damir Perisa wrote:

Sunday 14 October 2007, Roman Kyrylych wrote: | Yes, but developers also can (and some of them do) maintain | packages in community.

yes, but as TU's not as devs. their function there is different.

i do not want to addopt any pkgs in community. i wanted to help out building for 64bit there just because i had some cpu cycles to spare a afternoon.

if a dev goes to community to maintain some packages, it is 1) taking manpower that should come from TUs 2) stepping into the work of TUs and spending more time off the devs playground. of course it is not really bad, but don't you have enough official pkgs to maintain?

- D

If a dev wants to maintain a package (regardless of its type), we shouldn't force him to maintain it in community repo. Whether a dev maintains it in community or extra doesn't reduce his workload. Plus the extra repo has some advantages like the filelist link on the package interface and the use of the bug tracker. I maintain quite a few packages in community but these were added before I became a dev and I never bothered moving them to extra. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007, Damir Perisa wrote:

Sunday 14 October 2007, Thomas Bächler wrote: | To me this is easy: The core/extra/unstable repositories are | maintained by the smaller group of Archlinux Developers, the | community repository is maintained by the larger and less strictly | controlled group of Trusted Users.

i agree to this distinction. extra is per definition extra to core (or earlier current - the main official repo). it is extra, but it is official.

community is not official by devs but official by community - therefore also the name. it is less strict and can also be less clean (of course it should be kept as clean as anything :) )

official means, that at least one dev is responsible for the contents.

if somebody needs (wants) to document this, here a first draft from my thoughts:

== a package needs to be in extra (if not core) because:

* it is a dependency to other pkgs and crucial to their functionability i.e. it is a node in the dependency tree - compared to the leaves on the end of the tree - e.g. non-core libs, xorg, ...)

* it has a main benefit on the system functions (additional drivers against kernel26 or official xorg)

* it affects in any case any of the functions of packages in [core]

== a package may be in extra (per definition not in core! core only has pkgs that _need_ to be there) because at least a dev is willing to maintain it and:

* it is an open source project product (i.e. not limited distribution) in the state of usability --- if this criteria is not set, it may be in unstable

* it is a very popular package

* it covers a unique function to an OS with open source software (e.g. publishing - scribus)

== a package should not be in extra:

* if it does not need to be there + there is no reason that it may reside there

* if no dev is using it

* if no dev is willing to maintain it (orphans are temporary per definition and should be moved after a certain lag phase to unmaintained (=unsupported) if nobody wants it)

please feel free to enhance this thoughts if you feel needed.

I suggest the following process: If a dev wants to maintain a package, he can do so in the extra repo. When he orphans it he post to the ML so that we know about the issue and to perhaps speed up its readoption by another dev. If no dev wants to adopt it and if its movable to community (above reasons), we ask if a TU wants to adopt it. If so, we move the package in community. If no TU wants to keep it, we could keep it in extra, especially if it's up-to-date and in working condition. We might be able to maintain it as an orphan as a group effort if people check it regularly for update and fixes. I don't have any problem in having a few orphans. If the package becomes stale or a pain to update/maintain, we can ask again the TU and this time move it to unsupported if no one wants it. We could also do the same if the number of orphans becomes too large to handle.

... and a general note on the whole matter: i realise that several devs - mostly newer devs - raise the matter now on the regular basis... and link it to the fact that we have quite some orphans laying around. stop it! we are all aware of the lots of orphans and the thoughts i listed above.... but i do not want to have it risen every time i include a new pkg to extra (to my list of pkgs! i never orphaned a pkg without a fundamental reason in the last 3 years).

- D

-- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.