[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] [extra] repository cleanup

[甘露(Gan Lu)]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Heiko Baums <lists at baums-on-web.de> wrote:
> I know I'm crossposting this, but this rather belongs to arch-general
> than to aur-general.
>
> Am Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:19:40 -0500
> schrieb Kaiting Chen <kaitocracy at gmail.com>:
>
>> I think it's kind of hard for me to see why I should maintain a
>> package that's already been discarded by its developer. In my opinion
>> such packages should be moved to [unsupported] where the one more two
>> people who might want to use them can simply build them themselves.
>
> Why should those packages be removed from the repos as long as they are
> running? That doesn't make sense. And such packages doesn't make any
> work for the developers. They can just be staying in the repos without
> doing any harm like e.g. eboard.
You got my point.
>
> Regarding ding as an example doesn't make much work for the devs
> because it's updated by upstream every two years. And this package is
> really popular at least in Germany, because it's an English-German
> dictionary. And this tool is really old - but not outdated and
> unmainted. It's one of the first Linux applications and available in
> every repo of every distro.
>
> And the question is not cleaning up the repos in principle. The
> question is this mass cleanup and the removal of several popular and
> important packages even if they are orphaned.
>
> If there's an orphan quite popular then an unorphaned packages which is
> not popular or important could be moved to AUR and the orphaned and
> more popular package could be adopted by this dev. Just an example.
>
> squashfs-tools are necessary for building LiveCDs incl. the Arch Linux
> installation CD as far as I know. So I'm not sure if this package
> actually wouldn't belong to [core].
>
> btrfs-progs also doesn't belong to AUR. This package belongs into
> [core] and should be supported by AIF. Even if it's still marked as
> experimental, many people in the web report that it's pretty stable and
> that it's only missing an fsck. And many people report that it's
> usable on systems which don't need to be absolutely reliable.
>
> Btw., instead of the stable package btrfs-progs there's a package
> btrfs-progs-unstable in [extra] which really makes sense as the repos
> are meant to be stable repos.
>
> eboard, a still working and good chess GUI, was moved from [extra] to
> AUR. It's not maintained by upstream anymore but it's still working,
> it's quite popular and doesn't make any work for the devs. Having this
> in [extra] means there's a compiled and working package which doesn't
> need to be maintained. Having this package in AUR means that every user
> who wants to install this package must compile this package by himself.
> So what sense does this cleanup make? It makes completely no sense!
>
> epdfviewer is a very popular because lightweight PDF viewer for GTK.
> Galculator is the best calculator for GTK I know and also quite
> popular, at lest recommended quite often e.g. in the Xfce wiki. What's
> such a package doing in AUR?
>
> And, please, don't tell me anything about missing interest of the devs.
> As if every dev is using every package which he maintains himself or
> every dev only maintains only packages he is using himself.
>
> This is what I name and shame.
>
> This mass cleanup was just done inconsiderately.
>
> I really respect the voluntary work of the devs and TUs. And I really
> honor their work in their spare time. And I don't expect too much. But
> if a repo shall be cleaned up this must be done a lot more considered.
We are practical people, aren't we? Please reconsider this cleanup,
thanks. I don't mean it's bad, but please reconsider some.
>
> Heiko
>