[arch-dev-public] Breaking the unspoken rule: AUR helper in [community]

[Paul Mattal]

On 12/29/2010 09:46 PM, Allan McRae wrote:
> On 30/12/10 12:16, Dan McGee wrote:
>> http://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/i686/cower/
>>
>> Thoughts? I was under the impression we didn't do this, and definitely
>> on purpose, otherwise people have *no* idea the AUR is different in a
>> lot of ways. Making people go the "hard way" to get a helper installed
>> at least presents some (necessary) barrier.
>
> I have not used this, but I understand that it only automates the
> downloading of PKGBUILDs for the packages. You still need to manually
> build them. So, I am less against including this in the repos than
> something that does the building too. Still, it is a fine line...

When we first launched the AUR, we thought about this a lot. I agree 
it's a fine line, but I think the package build step is the right place 
for the line. This is close to the line-- but that's where the optimal 
efficiency lies.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I fully support any decision of the 
developers and TUs that might be more conservative for 
practical/empirical reasons. But I would object to policies that allowed 
automatic building of packages from untrusted PKBUILDs.

- P