[aur-general] TU without [community] maintaining?

[Pierre Chapuis]

Le Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:41:38 +0100,
Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org> a écrit :

> I think it is a good idea. We could create the "AUR moderator" position
> instead of calling it "Semi-TU".
> 
> When I was a TU, I didn't care at all about moderating the AUR, and
> maybe other TUs feel the same and rather do packaging. Conversely, you
> don't seem to care about packaging but about AUR moderation.
> 
> I am forwarding this to arch-dev-public for reference, but I guess
> ultimately the TUs have to decide.

I even think it could be a good idea to have "real" Trusted Users in the
sense that they can be trusted as to which packages they publish on the
AUR, not necessarily in binary form. They would be approved by some
process, and then added to a list which could be used by software like
yaourt / pakthan / bauerbill to let the users install their packages
without checking the PKGBUILDs. The fact that a package on the AUR is
maintained by one of these users (they would include current TUs and
devs) would be accessible in the metadata (through the json RPC for
example).

I know there used to be a flag like that on the AUR and that it didn't
work, but I think it's mainly because it was on a "by package" basis
instead of a "by user" basis, which makes it a lot more work for those
who have to check.

As for what should be checked when users apply for this position, I
would say at least:

  - a sufficient expertise in packaging, proved by the existence of
    several good packages maintained by them on the AUR, and
  - a means to contact them efficiently (valid email address).

Anyway this is just my two cents as an Arch user, but I consider the
lack of any way to trust AUR PKGBUILDs without reading them to be the
thing that annoys me most with Arch as of now.

-- 
catwell