On 2021-03-11 at 09:11:34 +0100, Reto via arch-general <arch-general@lists.archlinux.org> wrote:
On 11 March 2021 08:54:16 CET, Matthias Bodenbinder <matthias@bodenbinder.de> wrote:
Your example is not valid. Because the two different definitions of an orphan are within the same context: arch package management. Depending on which repo you are getting the package from an orphan is this or that. That is ambigious.
Except it really isn't the same context...
The AUR is a repository for package recipes, the build files only.
If you look at the definition you gave from pacman
orphans - packages that were installed as dependencies but are no longer required by any installed package.
That makes absolutely no sense for a build recipe, it simply can't refer to the same thing. You don't install pkgbuild instructions and a repo of those doesn't have things installed.
Suppose I install packages big-application and useful-library from AUR, and big-application depends on useful-library. Then I uninstall big-application, and useful-library's maintainer abandons it. Now useful-library on my system is a orphan under both definitions, so if all I say is that useful-library is an orphan, then the context to which I am referring is, in fact, ambiguous. Often, though, the context is given by, well, the context of my statement.
So no, package building and package installation aren't the same context, even if related.