[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] RFC: Forbid dummy packages from AUR

[Óscar García Amor]

El jue, 24 mar 2022 a las 12:54, Jonathon Fernyhough via arch-general
(<arch-general at lists.archlinux.org>) escribió:
>
> On 24/03/2022 07:39, Óscar García Amor via arch-general wrote:
> > But why?
>  >
>  > I don't quite understand why this should be banned.
>
> It's essentially the equivalent of installing a package then -Rdd a
> dependency. Would that process be encouraged in other situations?

Not exactly, it depends on the package. There are packages that create
users and do not remove them after uninstallation, so not all packages
have a 100% clean uninstallation (not counting the impact on the disk,
fragmentation...).

> > as described in the RFC, has a clear and justified use.
>
> If you're referring to the shim package, there's a difference between a
> "pure" dummy package that has no content and only meets a dependency,
> and a shim package that implements functionality in a different way.

I believe that both cases are justified. At least as long as there is
no entry in the pacman configuration that allows to assume that
certain packages are already installed.

> > if you have a high number of dummy dependencies it can be messy.
>
> What sort of situations are there where you would have a large number of
> dummy packages? And as a follow-up, why is that situation acceptable?

In my personal case, I have to use `--assume-installed` with
subversion and mercurial because they are dependencies of devtools
although they are not really necessary if you don't use that kind of
repositories. But of course, this is my personal case, I understand
that there may be other cases in which there are people who may have
more packages in this situation.

Greetings
-- 
Óscar García Amor | ogarcia at moire.org | http://ogarcia.me