On Dec 17, 2007 4:22 AM, Karolina Lindqvist <karolina.lindqvist@kramnet.se> wrote:
SUGGESTION 1: Have a central repository for all the source files needed by archlinux, and modify makepkg so that when the source cannot be found on the original place, it is gotten from this backup repository. That way makepkg will always work on a package.
SUGGESTION 2: Have a spider that goes through the abs tree, and check if every source file is available. When a source is found missing on its original place, an email is sent to the respective developer for action. Until he fixes the problem, the backup source file repository will provide the source.
We've actually discussed hosting the sources somewhere on our own servers, but nothing has come of it yet.
I understand the policy of archlinux, that it should work on the developers machines, and that there is no big interest of expanding to anything else. About the makepkg erroring out, on second thought I think it is a good idea.
Well, no, that's not Arch's policy at all. The problem is, we're staffed by a handful of volunteer developers. We made the decision to be i686-optimized, and later on the decision to support x86_64, but there's only so much we can do, and so we stand by those decisions. At current, there are no plans to support i586 officially.