[aur-general] changing the status of the maintainer field

[Angel Velásquez]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Heiko Baums <lists at baums-on-web.de> wrote:
> Am Fri, 22 May 2009 11:34:38 -0500
> schrieb Chris Brannon <cmbrannon at cox.net>:
>
>> Actually, -Qi'ing or -Si'ing a package doesn't list the maintainer at
>> all! The "Packager: " field in the output is the name + email of the
>> person who last built the package,
>
> But only, if the packager has set the PACKAGER variable in
> his /etc/makepkg.conf. And I think I can remember, that not every
> packager (dev or TU) has set this correctly.
>
> Heiko
>

Actually, you can export an env var with the value of that..

i.e: PACKAGER="Angel 'angvp' Velasquez" makepkg

But now talking about the topic, you can also set the "Maintainer"
flag with an env var and adding it to the .PKGINFO (I thought Andrei
Thorp suggested this anyway) and past maintainers can be parsed in
another .PKGINFO Field. This will need modifications of the makepkg
script (and adding this to pacman in the -i option), but I think this
is a good solution, for having the *actual* maintainer with -Qi or
-Si.

In code the thing will be like:

MAINTAINER="Angel 'angvp' Velasquez" makepkg

And then the makepkg will do these new jobs:

1.- Add the value of the env var MAINTAINER as the current maintainer
2.- Add the value of the env var MAINTAINER  (if the value isn't in
the array) to an array of pasts_maintaners to the .PKGINFO ..

Note 1: If the MAINTAINER var wasn't set it will use the value of
PACKAGER if isn't empty, or the classical "None" in case both vars are
empty

Note 2: Because is annoying to set the name everytime you will build a
package that you maintain, you can add this var in something like
.bashrc or on a script, BUT if you are building a package from another
tu/dev (cause he asked the favour to you or something like), you
should have to set it with the value of the *actual* maintainer with
the ugly way:

MAINTAINER="John Doe <foo at bar.com>" makepkg

Note 3: to see past maintainers you should have the unpack the
packages and see it on the .PKGINFO file, (because in my opinion,
adding this information to -i is too much)

Note 4: there are a web interface which actually parse the value of
PACKAGER on the .PKGINFO [1]

This Isn't something hard to do at all .. but I know that many people
wouldn't like it this idea :/, actually I have to say, for me will be
the same to implement or not this solution.

[1] http://www.archlinux.de/?page=Packagers


-- 
Angel Velásquez
angvp @ irc.freenode.net
Linux Counter: #359909