On 17/03/24 00:45, Marcell Meszaros wrote:
Mattia, please kindly use bottom-posting style instead of top-positing.
On 16 March 2024 23:05:54 GMT+01:00, Mattia Moffa<mattia@moffa.xyz> wrote:
Please, note that it has already been decided multiple times by trusted users that Eclipse packages should not include the -bin suffix. The eclipse-java-bin and the eclipse-jee-bin packages have been deleted in the past for the same reason. Also, back when Eclipse was in the official repositories, it was not built from source, in the same way as here.
https://lists.archlinux.org/hyperkitty/list/aur-requests@lists.archlinux.org...
https://lists.archlinux.org/hyperkitty/list/aur-requests@lists.archlinux.org...
Thank you.
Citing bad precedent should not be used as a valid argument here.
AUR non-bin-suffixed packages should not carry architecture-specific ELF files in case the source is open – that should be the ground rule.
The original rationale behind the Java jar exception was because it was said that such Java bytecode binaries are already platform-neutral and that rebuilding from source would yield the same bytecode, and would yield the same execution performance and security.
However, Eclipse as a desktop GUI application binds to ELF libraries installed in the system, like Gtk3 and many of its downstream libraries, and therefore it is not platform-independent.
Therefore the non-bin pkgname should be reserved for the source-based build, because AUR users should have the right to build platform-dependent code from source.
Additionally, Eclipse's upstream configures their binary build for maximum compatibility, not performance or security.
The prebuilt Eclipse-CPP ELF .so files lack RELRO and Intel shadow stack support, and some even have executable stack!
They also have insecure RPATHs.
It is fine as an alternative choice to offer eclipse-cpp-bin, as a user can choose it for convenience.
But such a binary build should not forcefully occupy the non-bin-suffixed namespace of this application on AUR.
A source-based PKGBUILD should not be relegated to second-class status, to use a suffixed pkgname like eclipse-cpp-src.
(The ArchWiki does not have any provisions for having something like an '-src' suffix when a prebuilt non-bin package occupies the namespace of an open-source platform-dependent application.)
Just a quick note to explain the reason for these circumstances: when Eclipse was in extra, it was not built from source, it was packaged from the official packages provided by the Eclipse foundation. As a result, when it was moved to the AUR things remained that way for a couple of years. In 2021 I took over the (abandoned) split package and requested its deletion to replace it with multiple stand-alone packages (more suitable for the AUR) and maintain them (java, jee, cpp, php and later dsl). This is why things are in the current state. Due to this situation, almost all software based on Eclipse in the AUR has no '-bin' suffix, although it's not built from source. This means that all of the following packages should be moved to their '-bin' counterparts: eclipse-java, eclipse-jee, eclipse-cpp, eclipse-php, eclipse-dsl, eclipse-rcp, eclipse-embedcpp, eclipse-platform, scala-ide, nueclipse, aptana-studio, dbeaver-le, dbeaver-ee, dbeaver-ue, knime-desktop, rodin. I very likely missed some, there's quite a lot of software based on Eclipse. In case the decision is taken to move 'eclipse-cpp' to 'eclipse-cpp-bin', please also take these packages into consideration.