I should mention (in other forums too, probably, but you brought up the issue so you get the benefit of my spontaneous response!) is that I have been thinking about the possible merits of allowing multiple versions of the same package for some time in AUR. It's an idea that appeals to me greatly. I think the challenge will be making it simple enough to handle multiple versions of a package without it becoming overly complex. We Arch-ers like our simplicity! I'd be interested to hear more ideas about how an elegant system could be constructed that would allow multiple versions of the same package by different maintainers. What would the db look like? What would the UI look like? What would the PKGBUILD hierarchy look like? How would things get handled when you transition unsupported->community, etc? How would we explain it simply to the community? Of course, there's a lot of AUR discussion to be done. It's nearly time to sit down and have a broad-based community discussion about it and think about what's next. I'm sorry I've had so little time to devote to it recently. I'm planning to sit down with my calendar very soon to figure out some dates to propose for the Grand Unified Discussion Session. ;) - P cactus wrote:
To me, the main reason for the continued existence of personal repositories, is that the aur only allows a single package per name. If two people want to package the same utility differently, too bad. Only one person can "own" it in the aur.
Further, I custom compile several binaries (php with tidy-2.0 support for instance). If someone else wants to use my binary, then they are free to do so, instead of compiling it themselves.
Those are just two examples off the top of my head, why I think personal user repositories will never go away.
In all honesty, I am going to use mBira as a front end to my personal binary repository (replacing my previous use of PRIMAL). If nobody else does, then that is their choice, and they are welcome to make it.
I just figured I would let people know about it, and let them make their own choices.
On 6/1/05, Dusty Phillips <buchuki@gmail.com> wrote:
Since AUR can contain unofficial PKGBUILDs, I question the utility of this? Why don't users with binary package dbs submit the packages to AUR instead.
The answer, of course, will be "because they have to build the packages themselves". To this end, I think a script based on sourcepac that automatically downloads PKGBUILDs and builds them would be more useful.