Sometimes packages are silently dropped from the repos. This happened for example in the last few days with mash 0.2.0-3, which apparently I installed as a dependency for gnome (I guess it is no longer required). I follow arch-general, arch-dev-public and aur-general, and as far as I know, this change wasn't announced in any of these lists. I recall other examples in the last 2-3 years (this is roughly the time I've used arch consistently), but now I don't remember the packages involved.
Currently I try to keep track of these changes by running e.g. "pacman -Qm" and "pacman -Qdt" once in a while, so it's no big deal. However, I think it would be interesting to know from a more "official" channel when a package is dropped and why. This would allow users to be aware of the change and decide whether the package is still needed (and act accordingly, e.g. if the package is dropped to AUR, one could subscribe to comments or check for updates) or can be safely uninstalled.
I searched without finding anything decisive (e.g. these threads [1] [2] suggest possible workarounds in the form of scripts). I wonder if better methods to track dropped packages exist; if not, would it be feasible to implement a solution, e.g. a list where dropped packages are announced, similar to "last rites" in gentoo?
yes, most arch users could write a script to track this after the fact, but personally I like the idea of advance notification. Perhaps a mailing list could be created for each repository, e.g. arch-core-notification arch-extra-notification, etc. New packages could be announced automatically. Deletions could be announced a week in advance, with any discussion taking place on arch-general. Maybe something like this is already going on among the TUs; if so, there's at least a bit of interest in making that more visible. Carl