On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 09:09:30PM +0100, oliver wrote:
Hello,
is it possible to see the number of downloads of packages from AUR, so that it can be detected, how much interest in a package exists?
Say, there are some users who do not have a AUR-login, and just would install the packages that are there... which are possibly outdated, but would nevertheless be interested in installing newer package, if possible.
If the download number is high enough, even if there are not much votes (because some people may only install stuff but are not interested in package maintaining and so on), then at least interest of a package might be detected this way.
This is an extremely flawed premise.
I'm asking, because I think I can adopt some more packages, but would of course only pick those that I find interesting.
They might be interesting (topic), even if I wil not use them by myself. So, from that standpoint, I would then select by my own interest and that of other people. For packages that I use by myself, of course my interest is clear, and I would pick such packages.
This is really strange (non-)logic. The best maintainer for a package is one who is actively interested in the package itself and uses it. How else could you possibly support it?
But say there are 100 orphaned packages and 20 of them look interesting, but I would not use them by myself, then I would adopt those, who are wanted by many people. (And any package that I want to install myself.)
I hope I could make ckear, why I'm asking.
Say, there are 5 interesting packages, but 3 of them will not be used, because that stuff is not used any more (maybe because better projects are to prefer), then three don't need support I think.
So, the tarball download numbers do matter in this respect.
I disagree. Downloading a tarball doesn't mean you intend to build, install, and use it.
Is it possible to add them to the AUR-pages of a project?
And display this how? A flat "download count" would be of little interest or value. Would it be reset every time there's a new PKGBUILD uploaded? Maybe only for pkgver changes? Would that include pkgrel bumps too? What about historical data? Trending? Unique by IP? Unique by IP within a given date range? If you want to make download count a useful metric, you have to do a lot more than display a raw counter. As you propose it, it's no better (and probably worse) than a vote count.