[aur-general] Proposed rules for packages entering [community]

[Allan McRae]

Firmicus wrote:
>
> I basically agree that we need some form of control.
>
> However I have some reservations and comments.
>
> First, I would like to understand the usefulness of discussing and 
> voting on this proposal first, before tackling the (IMO probably more 
> serious issue) of having too many packages with very low popularity / 
> usefulness in our community repo. Perhaps the former issue is easier 
> to deal with? Or could serve as a basis for dealing with the latter one?
>

Paving the way...  Basically stop the problem getting any worse first.  
Then do the real fixing.  This is probably also the least controversial 
of the two.

> Now to the specific points of the proposal:
>> * Only "popular" packages may enter the repo, as defined by 1% usage 
>> from pkgstats or 10 votes on the AUR.
>
> Allan, can you develop a bit more what is your criterion for the 
> figures 1% or 10 votes. Why not 5% or 3 votes? (which in my humble 
> opinion would seem to make more sense...)
>

I just liked the minimum of 1% for community.  Ten votes comes from 
looking at the number of votes best at discriminating packages  with 
more or less than 1% of usage.  In fact any number between 10 and 20 
does quite well but people told me 20 was really too many...

>> * Any additions not covered by the above criteria must first be 
>> proposed on the aur-general mailing list, explaining the reason for 
>> the exemption (e.g. renamed package, new package) at which point a 
>> general consensus from the TUs will be reached. TUs with large 
>> numbers of "non-popular" packages are more likely to be rejected. 
>
> What should a "general consensus" look like? If 5 TUs are for and 3 
> are against and the remaining ones do not reply, do we say yes or no? 
> Can we be more specific on the above point without burdening the 
> procedure with bureaucratic rules?
>

That is the main thing that needs defined before I call for a vote.  I 
really want others ideas on this.  Perhaps agreement of 3 other TUs.

>> Stefan Hussmann wrote:
>>> Some thoughts. - If we encourage people to drop packages that are 
>>> not popular, we
>>> should also encourage them to take packages in "usupported" that _are_
>>> popular to "community".
>>
>> That would be the idea.
>
> I have examined the repos extra, community and unsupported quite 
> carefully, and as a result I do not think there are that many packages 
> in unsupported that really deserve being in community! Possible 
> candidates are
>
> yaourt, etc: but only if wain would become a TU AND if we think it is 
> a good idea to support that very popular tool (not sure personally – 
> also it is only a script, so easy to install).

Remember we do not support automatic building from unsupported

> aurup

Do we support AUR uploaders?

> nspluginwrapper-flash + dependencies > well, these are no longer 
> required I believe
> splashy
> wine-doors
> songbird

There are license issues with the icons there.  Also, last time I 
checked it would not build from source without patching xulrunner in 
ways mozilla devs are against.  Otherwise I would have it there now!

> <enemy-territory, warsow, openarena etc. : if TUs are interested>

Daenyth and others have an arch-games unofficial repo with many games in it.

> uswsusp
> customizepkg
> pactools

A few scripts in that package are now part of pacman (orphan detection) 
and others are in the official pacman-contrib scripts. 

> archassistant
> vlc-plugin
> fbsplash
>
> Otherwise, I would rather VERY MUCH encourage TUs to have a look at 
> the packages in EXTRA that are currently orphaned, and to contact the 
> devs if you are interested to maintain some of them in community. 
> There are many more important packages there that would deserve to be 
> maintained in community than being orphaned in extra.
>
> That's it for now.
>
> F
>

Allan