- Aur-general - lists.archlinux.org

Re: [aur-general] pastebinit: packager MIA
by Peter Lewis 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

On Sunday 12 September 2010 at 18:06 Jakob Gruber wrote: > Last activity by this maintainer was in July 2009, and some of his packages > are outdated / broken so I'm guessing he's disappeared. > > The following packages have been disowned: > > ascii http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=22593 > tornado http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=15698 Adopted. I think I know where my Monday morning is going.... :-) Pete.

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[aur-general] pastebinit: packager MIA
by François Boulogne 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

Hello, The following package http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=14710 for pastebinit is no longer maintained. I sent an email to the PKGBUILD author, he didn't reply me; so I guess he is MIA. I can maintain this package. (my username: Spip) Cheers, -- François Boulogne.

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[aur-general] new trusted users accounts
by Ionuț Bîru 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

Hi, this message is for the newly members in our team. Please send me your details to give you account on our arch interface to manage your package. From know own i'm in charge of this. -- Ionuț

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[aur-general] Please delete a lot of packages
by Det 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

Hi, please do such a thing. 1) xorg-server-gentoo (delete; unnecessary (the patches that were originally used with this package have all been pulled upstream over the years) and not being updated): http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=15089 2) songbird-nightly (delete; unnecessary ('songbird-auto-nightly' actually works as it should) and not being updated): http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=13193 3) songbird-nightly-bin (delete; unnecessary ('songbird-auto-nightly' actually works as it should and uses precompiled binaries) and not being updated): http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=32932 4) songbird-nightly-latest (delete; unnecessary ('songbird-auto-nightly' actually works as it should) and not being updated): http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28885 5) songbird-svn (delete; should replace songbird with its PKGBUILD (of course after changing the pkgname to just 'songbird')): http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=23968 6) songbird (orphan/replace with 'songbird-svn'; doesn't work - 'songbird-svn' does. Both aren't needed since there is a separate 'songbird-bin' package using the precompiled binaries. This can of course be done the other way around too so that 'songbird' would be removed but maybe that shouldn't be done.. I don't know, that's why you are doing this - not me): http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=7286 Thanks for deleting a lot of packages, 'Det'

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[aur-general] Delete request: tint
by elwin013 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

Hi. :) Please remove tint [1] package from AUR because it's not up-to-date and same package is in Community repo [2] [1] http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=17082 [2] http://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/i686/tint2/ -- elwin013 jabber: elwin013(a)jabbim.pl mail: kontakt(a)elwin013.com

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[aur-general] TU application.
by Peter Lewis 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

Hi folks, After the recent discussions about the number of TUs, the size of [community] etc., I have decided to apply to be a Trusted User myself. Chris Brannon has kindly agreed to sponsor me. So, here's my application. ..oO----Oo.. Who am I? I'm 30 and I live in Birmingham in the UK. I'm a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, in the School of Computer Science. I also teach programming there (Java mainly). When I'm not on the computer, I'm into hiking, photography, growing my own veg, making home-brew beer and that sort of thing. I have a largely non-technical blog here, in case you're interested: http://www.petesodyssey.org/ ..oO----Oo.. What's my experience? I've been a day-to-day GNU/Linux user since around 1998, when I got hold of a SuSE magazine cover CD and installed it on (IIRC) my AMD K6 machine. I used SuSE, Debian, *buntu and Gentoo for day to day stuff, before finding Arch about two years ago. I also spent a while learning about how Linux systems are put together going through the Linux From Scratch book and all that. I have to say that (and I know this is preaching to the choir but) Arch impressed me immediately and still does. When I found it, I had just spent a few weeks trying to understand the Debian packaging manual and had given up being able to learn how to do what I wanted (which was basically Linux From Scratch but with a way to manage updates). I can only describe the transition to Arch as feeling like my computer was working for me again, rather than against me (or worse, me for it)! I now use Arch on my laptop for everyday work - mainly scientific simulations and writing research papers. I also run another couple of boxes (one mainly for gaming, the other runs mythtv) as well as an Arch VPS at Linode, which handles my mail, web and other hosting needs. I was the first person (I think) to use Arch in our department at the university, and since then I've helped another half a dozen or so people make the switch. We run a "Linux Install Day" each year for the new students, and while most of them seem to want Ubuntu (because they've heard of it), I try to get hold of the ones that are more interested in understanding what's going on and spend a bit of time with them setting up Arch. They are always really appreciative and it's cool then watching them demonstrating their uber1337ness to the other students. It's actually becoming quite well appreciated as a distro in the department as a whole. Anyway... I do a lot of coding and have mainly used Java, C, C++ and PHP. I've also done a bit of Python and Ruby. Unfortunately not much of my code gets into open source projects, but I can usually find my way around unfamilar code bases pretty well and so have no trouble adding the odd patch here and there to fix things and make them work. I think this would be a useful skill when packaging things for Arch. I should point out that I'm in no way a black-belt at Bash, but I can certainly put together shell scripts for the things I need, and just tend to learn stuff as and when I need it. I aim to learn more of the ninja shell scripting stuff through being a TU, to be honest. ..oO----Oo.. Why do I want to be a TU? Well, you see there are all these really helpful people making Arch so great. And I've benefited from all that. So, I figure it's time I contribute something back. (Ask not what your distro can do for you, but what you can do for your distro... or something.) It also seems to me that there should be more TUs (without compromising quality, of course). I know that statistics aren't everything, but these made me stop and think: Packages in unsupported: 24406 Trusted Users: 22 (There have actually been over 66 new packages in the AUR in the last week.) Even with the best and most dedicated TUs in the world, and lots of help from ordinary users, I don't think that that kind of number of people can keep the AUR wheels greased, let alone maintain [community] too. I think it's a credit to the current and previous TUs that the AUR is the great thing that it is (and let's be honest, it's a big attraction of Arch). More TUs putting more effort into fewer packages each (preferably that they use) must be better than fewer TUs trying to have oversight of lots that they don't use much. As Chris rightly pointed out to me, people tend to care more about things that they use. Actually, by being a TU I also hope to learn more about what goes into making something like Arch so great, as well as improving my own skills. ..oO----Oo.. So what would I do as a TU? Well, mainly three things: 1) Maintain popular packages well and reliably. I currently maintain 7 packages in the AUR, and am interested particularly in things relating to science and research (e.g. latex, octave, sage, bibliographic management stuff like mendeley and kbib), as well as KDE things (I've been building and using KDE since version 1.0). And while I think it's ideal when people maintain things that they use themselves, this wouldn't restrict me from taking on other packages that I don't use. See my current packages here: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?SeB=m&K=petelewis 2) Promote Arch and the TU scheme. As I said, I think we need more TUs, while maintaining our high standard. I'd like to promote the TU scheme and get more skilled Arch users to take on maintaining the packages that they use. I think a world where more people maintain a small number of packages each in [community] will lead to a bigger and higher quality [community] repo. We should advertise, with the aim of having many more TUs. This also means that we shouldn't be afraid of voting people down if they're not yet ready, and give feedback to help them improve and invite them to apply again later. We all benefit from this. 3) Maintain / improve processes and package standards. I think that standard processes and packages are very important, and can make life using Arch a lot easier. It's also important that the processes are right, and this means attention to detail. Things like package naming and categories fall into this. I think a large part of the job of a TU is to keep the AUR clean and clear, and I would spend time helping to achieve this. I have in mind that bits of additional functionality, such as to enabling deletion requests to be handled through the web interface, perhaps duplicate flagging and package renaming would be useful and make the job of a TU easier. Over time, I would investigate implementing things like this. Also on processes, I'm a bit of a geek for democratic stuff, constitutions and bye-laws and things. I've worked with a couple of quite large democratic organisations on their election and decision-making rules and would be interested in helping to keep these working well for the good of Arch and us all too. Again, it's important to get the rules right, but in addition to hard rules, often establishing good etiquette is just as important (but IMO preferably without going down the Ubuntu route of canned responses). I think Arch people are good at this kind of thing, but I think it always helps to have people who are interested in keeping things fresh. If there are any questions, I'm very happy to try to answer them. Cheers, and thanks for reading. Pete.

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[aur-general] Permissions of community-staging need to be reset
by Eric Bélanger 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

Hi, Could an AUR admin (or Andrea) reset the perms of the community-staging repo db for both arches? Thanks

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[aur-general] Package removal request
by doorknob60 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

(sorry if you got this twice, I'm pretty sure the first one didn't work) The fretsonfire-alarian-mod package needs to be deleted, I have replaced it with the fofix package.

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[aur-general] ContextFree orphan request
by Hilton Medeiros 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

Hi, please, could someone orphan this package: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=13081 It is not updated since 2008. Thanks in advance, Hilton

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[aur-general] The Arch Way
by Christoph 11 Sep '10

11 Sep '10

Hi, I have just adopted the package xmind (http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=22394) because the former maintainer disowned it, and I am not shure which is the best way to build the package. There are three possibilities: 1) Building from source 2) Building from the "Portable" zip-file (see http://www.xmind.net/downloads/) 3) Building from the deb-files provided for Debian/Ubuntu (see http://www.xmind.net/downloads/) ad 1) This is what you would usually do, but according to http://groups.google.com/group/xmind-dev/browse_thread/thread/d68d0c8f30b4b… the eclipse ide would be a prerequisite, so that would need a very large download if you do not already have installed eclipse (nearly 170 MB for eclipse plus 10 MB for the xmind source code!) ad 2) This was the way the former maintainer went. Download size: 75 MB The portable zip-file contains both the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions, so the PKGBUILD just had to copy the right files. ad 3) When I proposed (a year ago) to use the deb-files instead in order to have smaller downloads (each of them, 32-bit and the 64-bit has appr. 36 MB), the maintainer told me that this would be ugly and "not the Arch way", that he would not do such a thing. When I told him that I did not get the point of it, since the zip file equally just installed ready-built binaries, he did not respond to it. I still think that using the deb-files would - in this special case - be the best option. But of course I would never dare to deviate from "the Arch way" (since it is the way to world domination, as we all know ;-)). What do you think? Christoph

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