On 8/12/25 2:43 PM, Ameyama Izumi wrote:

Hello,

The VLC package in [extra] was recently split into multiple subpackages (vlc, vlc-plugin-*, vlc-gui-*, etc.). This change adjusts dependencies, separates plugins, and alters installation paths. It affects not only VLC users but also other packages and third-party scripts that depend on VLC.

This change has already caused multiple issues for me and others I know.

Because the update may cause missing functionality, playback failures, or broken dependencies, and given its wide impact, I suggest posting an announcement on the Arch-announce mailing list so users are aware of the change before updating and can make necessary adjustments.

Ameyama Izumi

Pacman told you about it when you updated, why wasn't that enough? This didn't stop the update. This didn't cause a boot failure. It's not critical infrastructure. There's no reason a media player change should need more than one method of communication, so what could have been better *in pacman* to have made this clear?

On Wed, 2025-08-13 at 03:43 +0800, Ameyama Izumi wrote:

Hello, The VLC package in [extra] was recently split into multiple subpackages (vlc, vlc-plugin-*, vlc-gui-*, etc.). This change adjusts dependencies, separates plugins, and alters installation paths. It affects not only VLC users but also other packages and third-party scripts that depend on VLC.

This change has already caused multiple issues for me and others I know.

Well yeh - we seem to have gone on a bit of a split package party of late. While I do definitely understand there can be reasonable motivations (such as a disk space benefit for larger packages, such as linux- firmware), my view is we should follow upstream 'almost' all of the time unless there is a really, really good and substantial reason not to. By this I mean (IMHO) that the rule should be if the upstream git repo provides a bunch of things, our package of same should contain the same bunch of things. Some exceptions are fine but only with a pretty solid reason when we choose to not follow upstream. Splitting packages is also a lot of work and can add quite a lot of complexity to the PKGBUILD as well. In this regard I also believe we should also apply the KISS principle [1] for all the usual reasons. I did not look into vlc as to what is in the vpc repo nor what any benefit might be to splitting them into multiple paackages. Perhaps David can comment on the rationale for the split? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle -- Gene