On 18/03/13 22:04, Lukas Fleischer wrote:
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 09:25:42PM +0000, kachelaqa wrote:
I think I was thrown by the word "overwrite", which seems to suggest providing alternative values to the ones in the PKGBUILD - whereas the real purpose is to simply offer a "preferred" source for the same values (i.e. one which is easier to parse).
It is used as an alternate source if you specify all fields. The idea is that you can overwrite fields that the AUR PKGBUILD parser fails to parse without having to update other fields like the package version on every update. This might be changed in the future.
Right - "overwriting" does make sense in the context of correcting parsing failures.
The restriction on the available fields also seemed a little puzzling to me - but I suppose package maintainers are free to include whatever fields they like (as long as they follow the general file format).
Which ones are missing? I don't think that the AUR uses any other fields.
The metadata in .AURINFO files could be used by any third-party tools that want to avoid parsing the PKGBUILD, and those tools may want access to a wider set of fields (e.g. arch, optdepends, makedepends, etc). Presumably, if makepkg ever implements .SRCINFO generation, it will include more fields than the AUR currently needs.
Will the inclusion of an .AURINFO file be a requirement at some stage in the future?
This might become a requirement if it is implemented in makepkg or some other tool that auto-generates such files. It is just an experimental feature for now.
Okay, thanks.