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

[甘露(Gan Lu)]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 9:41 PM, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 And this tool is really old - but not outdated and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
Yes, I see your point and I support it. The following statement makes
me think that do you judge contribution by only if I or other are a TU
or dev? How do you know we are not contributing because I or others
are not a TU/dev. Anyone has his/her expertise.
> 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.
If some says  "this is shame", "I'm leaving",
"you suck", "developers are selfish",  you could certainly discard
them, but not I or Heiko, we just talk about our opinion.
Does a great community contain only TU/devs? Does Arch is driven by
them alone? If you think so what a upstream developer will think you
are?
>
> 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
>