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

[Dan McGee]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 7:31 AM, 甘露(Gan Lu) <rhythm.gan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 And this tool is really old - but not outdated and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.

Five step plan to success:
1) Actually contribute instead of whining on a mailing list
2) Get your name known in the TU/dev circles
3) Apply for a position where you can contribute more
4) Have your opinion actually count because we know you do work
instead of act as a roadblock
5) Become jaded like the rest of us, realizing that users always think
the world is ending, and when they say "this is shame", "I'm leaving",
"you suck", "developers are selfish", none of the developers have ever
really cared and would rather poisonous people leave anyway.

Because I enjoy getting things done, I'm now done with arch-general,
and I know several other devs have unsubscribed as of late because of
the useless traffic and emails like this one. Add me to that list.

-Dan