On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Chris Brannon <cmbrannon79@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael Witten wrote:
I guess my `replaces=(vimperator-git)' took care of it. :-)
I was wondering whether that would happen; I guess I should have checked.
No, I did.
Ah! :-) That's more believable.
You can't cause packages to be deleted automatically just by putting them in the "replaces" array. Imagine how easy it would be to abuse a (mis)feature like that!
It depends on the rules that define who and when something can be deleted. The current AUR policies are bizarre to me: The AUR is a sink for any old package, and the only way to unclog it is to contact the town plumber. Can't we give the village folk some tools to handle their own minor maintenance issues? In this case, as the maintainer of both packages (vimperator-{git,hg}), it wouldn't seem unreasonable to allow me to replace one package with another. In particular, why not at least allow a maintainer to deprecate a package; anyone else can un-deprecate a package, and after a while (say, a couple of months), if nobody has un-deprecated a deprecated package, then that package should be deleted automatically---or at least someone with the power to delete the package should be notified to do so. How about automatically marking a package as deprecated (as described above) if the package files haven't been accessed in some interval of time (say, a year). Also, how about automatically removing the maintainer of a package if that package has been marked out-of-date for some interval of time (say, a couple of months). Just some ideas (that probably aren't new). Thanks, mfwitten