There are technical reasons for this. I need the full main git repo to count the number of fixes on the current releases branch. This would not be possible if I'd clamp to a specific branch or commit (upstream has no release tags). I also need to assemble the source dependencies needed for the build. Upstream handles this via a collection of scripts called depot_tools, but this pulls in tons of unneeded source and git history in the gigabyte range, which I don't want. I have thus opted for a process closer to the recommended handling of git submodules, with the difference that instead of adding submodules I extract the needed git revisions from the depot_tools DEPS file in the release branch and do git checkouts. That being said, I too am not too happy with this build process and I am open for suggestions on how to improve it, but this is probably more a topic for aur-general or the arch forums. Am 23.07.20 um 23:56 schrieb notify@aur.archlinux.org:

katt [1] filed a deletion request for libpdfium-nojs [2]:

loads of `git checkout` instead of properly using sources

[1] https://aur.archlinux.org/account/katt/ [2] https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/libpdfium-nojs/