Re: [aur-dev] [PATCH 1/4] remove submitter from package data

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Dan McGee wrote:

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 1:48 PM, elij wrote:

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On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Lukas Fleischer wrote:

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On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 09:01:27PM -0700, elij wrote:

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---  web/html/pkgsubmit.php       |    3 +--  web/lib/pkgfuncs.inc         |   10 +---------  web/template/pkg_details.php |   11 -----------  3 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)

The submitter field proved to be useful in some cases where a package was moved from the official repos to the AUR and either turned out to be incomplete or wasn't properly removed from the official repos.

I guess I don't see what benefit the submitter field would have in such an instance. If someone moved it from the official repos to the aur, would they not be the submitter and also the maintainer? Initially, yes. And then we all usually orphan the junk because we don't want it, we just put it there for postarity, so you've immediately lost information.

I think it has a lot less usefulness on the web page itself (at least for the general public), so I wouldn't be against culling it there, but as far as a point of reference when trying to look at the packages, it makes since to keep around. It can be far different than what the maintainer field tells you.

Hmm. So keeping it but maybe only showing it to TU or Developer class users may be more appropriate. Alternatively, it almost sounds like maintainer and submitter could be merged into an 'owner' value, and track owner history somehow (record each change of ownership in a join table). That might add the ability to track users that upload lots of packages, then disown them too. And track packages with high owner turnover (may tell whether a package is painful or burdensome to maintain). If such a thing were implemented though, I think it should be displayed only to TU or Developer class users. I can't see general users finding much use for it, but I could be wrong.