canyonknight wrote:
IMHO, the only realistic way of ever including split packages in the AUR is the use of a source package metadata file. A dead easy to parse file within a source tarball that can give the AUR all the information it needs without all the bash parsing it currently attempts.
The truth is that using raw Bash to encapsulate package data was a lazy hack that didn't consider any future needs for (secure) metadata extraction. That only got worse with split PKGBUILDs as they bury metadata in functions so you can't even source the PKGBUILD to get that. The real solution is not to provide that same data redundantly in a second file but to replace PKGBUILDs with something better. I don't think that will ever happen in Pacman because of the work it would require. Fwiw, it is possible. My own internal system uses JSON to store package metadata and I just keep build and package code in a separate file. The only limitation is all of the nasty conditional logic used to configure different architectures, but even that can be gracefully handled with some thought and subdictionaries in the JSON file. One day someone will hopefully write a full bash parser that can safely extract the data instead of quick hacks to unreliably skim the basics.