In answer to http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2008-August/007644.html To Ronald : It is nice you worked on this, especially considering it was a feature request posted by Aaron himself : http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7132 However, I warmly recommend you to have a look at this : http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Development Especially the submitting patches page. And all the git guides. 1) you should really use git for doing pacman development 2) it it is a good idea to split patches, especially huge ones like this 3) all pacman development happens on pacman-dev, not arch-dev-public 4) all big patches go through the ML for review and discussion. Even Dan sometimes sends his own patches (the less trivial ones) there To everyone : About the feature itself, here is the last thread where it was discussed : http://archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2007-June/008555.html I was always divided about it. I understand the point of view "groups are installable, categories are not" However, after having a look at this patch, it seems like it justifies Nagy's opinion even more : http://archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2007-June/008565.html This category implementation basically looks like a duplication of the whole group implementation.