Hi everyone Reading the whole discussion with artist (on aur-requests) and vitaliikuzhdin (on [1]) the main arguments seems only these two: First argument:
Package xlibre-server https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=xlibre-server does have this for 'conflicts' and 'provides': - conflicts=('xorg-server' 'nvidia-utils<=331.20' 'glamor-egl' 'xf86-video-modesetting') - provides=('X-ABI-VIDEODRV_VERSION=28.0' 'X-ABI-XINPUT_VERSION=26.0' 'X-ABI-EXTENSION_VERSION=11.0' 'x-server')
vitaliikuzhdin in the AUR package xlibre-server web [2] explains he has removed the *provides* option in the PKGBUILD in order to avoid breakage with the existing packages, as xlibre-server **is not** fully compatible with xorg-server (the extra/xf86-* packages will not be compatible for example) so the users will experience issues by mixing those packages. This argument was also confirmed by artist on his side. At the same time, removing *provides* but leaving *conflicts* will lead to having a package which cannot be installed along with xorg-server and thus breaking all the packages requiring it [2] While this approach is technically working to build and install the xlibre-server package makes it not very usable, breaking any packages explicitly requiring a X server (see [2]), causing then, a breakage he was trying to prevent. Anyone installing xlibre-server will have conflicts with those packages, forcing the users to remove them if they want to install xlibre-server. In general way the *provides* option in PKGBUILD is used to specify what packages provide/offer the mentioned packages, it's not for specifying binary compatible replacements. Indeed a lot of packages use *provides* to specify different implementations, not perfectly binary compatible with the mentioned packages: - extra/mariadb provides mysql but it's not perfectly binary compatible with it, both have their differences and not fully interchangeable - extra/dracut provides initramfs like mkinitcpio but they behave very differently and they are not even slightly compatible - aur/nvidia-550xx-dmks provides nvidia which is not the same for the extra/nvidia package at all, also it's an older incompatible version For this reasons I believe there's nothing wrong to add provides=('xorg-server') to xlibre-server package, even if XLibre cannot offer a complete binary compatible drop-in replacement for xorg-server package. A good approach would be, of course, to inform the users how to complete the whole transition path [4], by installing the extra dependencies or by following instruction e.g. in the Wiki. Second argument:
Also, the correct package name is not xlibre-server but xlibre-xserver, as can be seen via url https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/releases/tag/xlibre-xserver-25.0.0.8, but the maintainer also does not agree with us.
This argument could be simply fixed later by submitting a newer package and merging xlibre-server into xlibre-xserver. However this newer package must be submitted by current xlibre-server maintainer only, any attempt to hijack the original maintainer will be rejected, as long the maintainer is properly updating the xlibre-server package and he will not abandon it or makes dangerous choices/abuses requiring a maintainer change (**this is not** the current situation). Best regards [1]: https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/xlibre-server?O=10 [2]: https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/xlibre-server?O=10#comment-1031168 [3]: https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xorg-server/ [4]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_package_guidelines -- Muflone