Am Sat, 13 Nov 2010 10:05:46 -0500 schrieb Leonid Isaev :

eboard: The latest version is: 1.1.1 (Feb 22nd, 2008) gdesklets: gDesklets 0.36.1 released November 5th 2008 lincity: The current stable release of lincity is version 1.12.1 (Aug. 13, 2004) tin: TIN 1.9.5 (unstable) was released on December 24th, 2009 Looks like a bunch of creeeeepy software.

pure-ftpd: Server -- if you use it, you must know how to build it. tsch: Well, it's like back to the future, only in reverse, right?

BTW, games under linux just... well... hmmm.

Just because a software is old it doesn't mean that it doesn't work or isn't used anymore. Well, I must admit that I don't know tcsh, but that's only one of them. Like I said, I had no problem with really unimportant or unnecessary packages or with packages which don't run anymore without being patched. But packages which still run like eboard and are just a bit older don't need to be actively maintained. So I don't know the problem with keeping them in [extra] as orphans. Heiko

Am Sat, 13 Nov 2010 10:18:02 -0500 schrieb Loui Chang :

Sorry, Heiko. I don't think you properly understand Arch culture here. If you want something done you are expected to contribute and put forth your own effort to make it happen. The TUs and Devs cannot be expected to be your personal support team and maintain hundreds of packages that you're particularly interested in unless you're willing to compensate them for their time. Their time is much more valuable than that.

I don't speak about "my personal support team". If there are a few packages I personally like to use which are not in the repos I don't say anything. I always used packages from AUR and I never said anything against it. But if those packages are getting more over time (in my personal case it was from less than 50 to now more than 100 in 3 years), because they are just moved from the binary repos to AUR, and if there are packages which are not really unimportant - not only from my personal point of view, and I'm not using all of those packages which shall be moved to AUR now - then I say something, because I don't think that this is right development of a distro. And the importance of a package is not measured by how much some developers or one single user are interested in or using it. It's rather measured by how many users are using them, how popular they are, by how many other projects they are recommended etc. Just a few examples. And some of these packages which shall be moved to AUR are e.g. on the list of recommended applications in the Xfce wiki. I don't think that those packages are so unimportant. So it's not my personal preferences. I try to see it from a quite objective point of view. And I have nothing against cleaning up a repo. But this should be done more considered. Means only unimportant, unpopular packages or packages which don't run anymore should be moved to AUR or removed completely but not packages which likely belong to the most popular ones. Heiko

At Samstag, 13. November 2010 17:32 Heiko Baums wrote:

And I have nothing against cleaning up a repo. But this should be done more considered. Means only unimportant, unpopular packages or packages which don't run anymore should be moved to AUR or removed completely but not packages which likely belong to the most popular ones.

+1 For to consider more. With only a message with the link to a wiki list it is very easy to oversee something and more important there is no information about to what for a certain time it will be done. I have not anything against having more (or less) applications from aur but i was a little bit surprised as my favorite editor for the console joe get throwed out of extra. So i ask for the possibility of having a RSS Feed (or a web page) with at examples such lines 2010-11-10 joe -> OLD REPO: EXTRA NEW REPO: AUR 2010-11-10 appXYZ -> OLD REPO: EXTRA NEW REPO: NULL 2010-11-12 libXYZ -> OLD REPO: COMMUNITY NEW REPO: EXTRA Is there any change that this could realize without too much extra cost? See you, Attila

At Sonntag, 14. November 2010 22:07 Eric Bélanger wrote:

There's already RSS feeds with that information (maybe not as compact as you want) :

http://aur.archlinux.org/rss.php http://repos.archlinux.org/wsvn/packages/?op=rss&isdir=1 http://repos.archlinux.org/wsvn/community/?op=rss&isdir=1

Thanks a lot. I don't know about number 2 and 3 but this informations be very helpfull ( and more than i want but i said 'without too much extra cost' :) ). See you, Attila

I know I'm crossposting this, but this rather belongs to arch-general than to aur-general.

Am Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:19:40 -0500 schrieb Kaiting Chen :

...

I think it's kind of hard for me to see why I should maintain a package that's already been discarded by its developer. In my opinion such packages should be moved to [unsupported] where the one more two people who might want to use them can simply build them themselves.

Why should those packages be removed from the repos as long as they are running? That doesn't make sense. And such packages doesn't make any work for the developers. They can just be staying in the repos without doing any harm like e.g. eboard. You got my point.

Regarding ding as an example doesn't make much work for the devs because it's updated by upstream every two years. And this package is really popular at least in Germany, because it's an English-German dictionary. And this tool is really old - but not outdated and unmainted. It's one of the first Linux applications and available in every repo of every distro.

And the question is not cleaning up the repos in principle. The question is this mass cleanup and the removal of several popular and important packages even if they are orphaned.

If there's an orphan quite popular then an unorphaned packages which is not popular or important could be moved to AUR and the orphaned and more popular package could be adopted by this dev. Just an example.

squashfs-tools are necessary for building LiveCDs incl. the Arch Linux installation CD as far as I know. So I'm not sure if this package actually wouldn't belong to [core].

btrfs-progs also doesn't belong to AUR. This package belongs into [core] and should be supported by AIF. Even if it's still marked as experimental, many people in the web report that it's pretty stable and that it's only missing an fsck. And many people report that it's usable on systems which don't need to be absolutely reliable.

Btw., instead of the stable package btrfs-progs there's a package btrfs-progs-unstable in [extra] which really makes sense as the repos are meant to be stable repos.

eboard, a still working and good chess GUI, was moved from [extra] to AUR. It's not maintained by upstream anymore but it's still working, it's quite popular and doesn't make any work for the devs. Having this in [extra] means there's a compiled and working package which doesn't need to be maintained. Having this package in AUR means that every user who wants to install this package must compile this package by himself. So what sense does this cleanup make? It makes completely no sense!

epdfviewer is a very popular because lightweight PDF viewer for GTK. Galculator is the best calculator for GTK I know and also quite popular, at lest recommended quite often e.g. in the Xfce wiki. What's such a package doing in AUR?

And, please, don't tell me anything about missing interest of the devs. As if every dev is using every package which he maintains himself or every dev only maintains only packages he is using himself.

This is what I name and shame.

This mass cleanup was just done inconsiderately.

I really respect the voluntary work of the devs and TUs. And I really honor their work in their spare time. And I don't expect too much. But if a repo shall be cleaned up this must be done a lot more considered. We are practical people, aren't we? Please reconsider this cleanup,

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Heiko Baums wrote: thanks. I don't mean it's bad, but please reconsider some.

Heiko

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 7:31 AM, 甘露(Gan Lu) wrote:

...

...

I know I'm crossposting this, but this rather belongs to arch-general than to aur-general.

Am Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:19:40 -0500 schrieb Kaiting Chen :

...

I think it's kind of hard for me to see why I should maintain a package that's already been discarded by its developer. In my opinion such packages should be moved to [unsupported] where the one more two people who might want to use them can simply build them themselves.

Why should those packages be removed from the repos as long as they are running? That doesn't make sense. And such packages doesn't make any work for the developers. They can just be staying in the repos without doing any harm like e.g. eboard. You got my point.

Regarding ding as an example doesn't make much work for the devs because it's updated by upstream every two years. And this package is really popular at least in Germany, because it's an English-German dictionary. And this tool is really old - but not outdated and unmainted. It's one of the first Linux applications and available in every repo of every distro.

And the question is not cleaning up the repos in principle. The question is this mass cleanup and the removal of several popular and important packages even if they are orphaned.

If there's an orphan quite popular then an unorphaned packages which is not popular or important could be moved to AUR and the orphaned and more popular package could be adopted by this dev. Just an example.

squashfs-tools are necessary for building LiveCDs incl. the Arch Linux installation CD as far as I know. So I'm not sure if this package actually wouldn't belong to [core].

btrfs-progs also doesn't belong to AUR. This package belongs into [core] and should be supported by AIF. Even if it's still marked as experimental, many people in the web report that it's pretty stable and that it's only missing an fsck. And many people report that it's usable on systems which don't need to be absolutely reliable.

Btw., instead of the stable package btrfs-progs there's a package btrfs-progs-unstable in [extra] which really makes sense as the repos are meant to be stable repos.

eboard, a still working and good chess GUI, was moved from [extra] to AUR. It's not maintained by upstream anymore but it's still working, it's quite popular and doesn't make any work for the devs. Having this in [extra] means there's a compiled and working package which doesn't need to be maintained. Having this package in AUR means that every user who wants to install this package must compile this package by himself. So what sense does this cleanup make? It makes completely no sense!

epdfviewer is a very popular because lightweight PDF viewer for GTK. Galculator is the best calculator for GTK I know and also quite popular, at lest recommended quite often e.g. in the Xfce wiki. What's such a package doing in AUR?

And, please, don't tell me anything about missing interest of the devs. As if every dev is using every package which he maintains himself or every dev only maintains only packages he is using himself.

This is what I name and shame.

This mass cleanup was just done inconsiderately.

I really respect the voluntary work of the devs and TUs. And I really honor their work in their spare time. And I don't expect too much. But if a repo shall be cleaned up this must be done a lot more considered. We are practical people, aren't we? Please reconsider this cleanup,

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Heiko Baums wrote: thanks. I don't mean it's bad, but please reconsider some.

Five step plan to success: 1) Actually contribute instead of whining on a mailing list Yes, I see your point and I support it. The following statement makes me think that do you judge contribution by only if I or other are a TU or dev? How do you know we are not contributing because I or others are not a TU/dev. Anyone has his/her expertise. 2) Get your name known in the TU/dev circles 3) Apply for a position where you can contribute more 4) Have your opinion actually count because we know you do work instead of act as a roadblock 5) Become jaded like the rest of us, realizing that users always think the world is ending, and when they say "this is shame", "I'm leaving", "you suck", "developers are selfish", none of the developers have ever really cared and would rather poisonous people leave anyway. If some says "this is shame", "I'm leaving", "you suck", "developers are selfish", you could certainly discard

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 9:41 PM, Dan McGee wrote: them, but not I or Heiko, we just talk about our opinion. Does a great community contain only TU/devs? Does Arch is driven by them alone? If you think so what a upstream developer will think you are?

Because I enjoy getting things done, I'm now done with arch-general, and I know several other devs have unsubscribed as of late because of the useless traffic and emails like this one. Add me to that list.

-Dan

On Wed, 2010-11-17 at 16:47 +0100, Andrea Scarpino wrote:

On Wednesday 17 November 2010 16:37:41 甘露(Gan Lu) wrote:

...

If some says "this is shame", "I'm leaving", "you suck", "developers are selfish", you could certainly discard them, but not I or Heiko, we just talk about our opinion. Does a great community contain only TU/devs? Does Arch is driven by them alone? If you think so what a upstream developer will think you are? A tester.

I lol-ed. And Gan Lu, I'm not sure which thread you've been following, but Heiko specifically references something along the lines of "I may as well go back to Gentoo". In the end this just sounds like "I'm going to whine because MY packages got deprecated". Repeatedly I see unfounded statements like 'popular and important packages'. Something like firefox or gcc is popular and important. The rest is niche. If the devs want to maintain them, fine, there's rules for that. If not, just go and compile it. It moves the burden of work to the person who cares about the package (which is obviously not the dev).

But heiko makes a point. If an unsupported package still worked, without compiling or something like that, why would you drop it? The idea with a new "unsupported" repo is not bad. You have got the binaries, but you are also saying: "this program will probably not work. We take no responsibility" "Ng Oon-Ee" schrieb:

On Wed, 2010-11-17 at 16:47 +0100, Andrea Scarpino wrote:

...

On Wednesday 17 November 2010 16:37:41 甘露(Gan Lu) wrote:

...

If some says "this is shame", "I'm leaving", "you suck", "developers are selfish", you could certainly discard them, but not I or Heiko, we just talk about our opinion. Does a great community contain only TU/devs? Does Arch is driven by them alone? If you think so what a upstream developer will think you are? A tester.

I lol-ed.

And Gan Lu, I'm not sure which thread you've been following, but Heiko specifically references something along the lines of "I may as well go back to Gentoo".

In the end this just sounds like "I'm going to whine because MY packages got deprecated". Repeatedly I see unfounded statements like 'popular and important packages'. Something like firefox or gcc is popular and important. The rest is niche. If the devs want to maintain them, fine, there's rules for that. If not, just go and compile it. It moves the burden of work to the person who cares about the package (which is obviously not the dev).

-- This message has been sent from my android phone with k-9 mail

----- Original message -----

But heiko makes a point. If an unsupported package still worked, without compiling or something like that, why would you drop it? The idea with a new "unsupported" repo is not bad. You have got the binaries, but you are also saying: "this program will probably not work. We take no responsibility" You are talking about something that already has been done. Anyway, is exactly that: we take no more responsability about those packages.

-- Andrea Scarpino Sent from Nokia N900