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

[stefan-husmann at t-online.de]

-----Original Message-----
> Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:27:33 +0100
> Subject: [aur-general] Proposed rules for packages entering
> [community]
> From: Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org>
> To: "Discussion about the Arch User Repository (AUR)"
> <aur-general at archlinux.org>

> Hi all,
> 
> As part of the TU meetings it was decided to post the proposal for
> restricting packages entering [community] here for discussion before
> voting.  Here is the current wording:
> 
> [proposal]
> 
> *  Only "popular" packages may enter the repo, as defined by 1% usage
> from pkgstats or 10 votes on the AUR.
> 
> * Automatic exceptions to this rule are:
> - i18n packages
> - accessibility packages
> - drivers
> - dependencies, including makedeps and optdeps
> - packages that are part of a collection and are intended to be
> distributed together, provided the primary part of this collection
> satisfies the definition of popular
> 
> * 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.
> 
> * TUs are strongly encouraged to move packages they currently maintain
> from [community] if they have low usage. No enforcement will be made,
> although resigning TUs packages may be filtered before adoption can
> occur.
> 
> [end proposal]
> 
> 
> So, go ahead and discuss.  Especially focus on the wording and regions
> that people would feel need clarification before I call for a formal
> vote.  In particular, I think the process for addition of packages
> which do not meet the popularity criteria needs to be defined better,
> so any ideas there would be appreciated.
> 
> Any further additions to do with cleaning the current package load in
> [community] for low usage package is a separate issue and will be
> discussed at a later date.
> 
> Allan
> 
> 
Hello, 

sorry, something must be wrong with my IRC-environment or with my
knowledge about it. Again I did not manage to join.
So let me discuss the proposal here.

First I have some questions.

What are accessibility packages? Things like ssh?
> - packages that are part of a collection and are intended to be
> distributed together, provided the primary part of this collection
> satisfies the definition of popular
To whose intention do you reflect here? I guess to upstreamer's
intention? I think of the texlive-doc packages here I maintain in
community. 

>TUs with large numbers of "non-popular" packages are more likely to be
rejected.
Do you mean that? Or should it be"packages of TUs with large numbers of
"non-popular" packages are more likely to be rejected."?

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".
- What if there are popular third party repos with packages? Should this
give an impact on our decision to put these packages to community or
not?
- The benefit for the user of packages being distributed in binary form
varies. I.e. a package with low complexity or no compile time could
easily stay in AUR even if it is popular. 

Just my 2 cents, 
regards Stefan