[aur-general] mistake in packaging guidelines

[vla at uni-bonn.de]

Am Sa, 16.01.2010, 17:32 schrieb Thayer Williams:
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 8:25 AM, Ionut Biru <biru.ionut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 01/16/2010 06:12 PM, hollunder at lavabit.com wrote:
>>>
>>> Please have a look here:
>>>
>>> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Packaging_Standards#Submitting_Packages_to_the_AUR
>>>
>>> It says:
>>> Please add a comment line to the top of your PKGBUILD file that
>>> follows this format. Remember to disguise your email to protect against
>>> spam: # Contributor: Your Name<address at domain dot com>
>>>
>>> This is wrong and should read: # Maintainer: Your Name<address at
>>> domain dot com>
>>>
>> you are correct.
>
> It's a half-truth isn't it?  I mean if if is the first time a package
> is being submitted to the AUR it *should* be Contributor and not
> Maintainer.  The Maintainer should only be appended to the list if
> replacing an existing PKGBUILD.  At least that was my understanding of
> it.
>
Hi all,

My two cents:
I think this "maintainer" and "contributor" stuff goes the wrong way and -
for me - it does not make much sense how it is now.
First I want to point out how I see it and how I understood it when I
started using Arch. Adding a PKGBUILD to the AUR is a "loose" contribution
to the Arch community (that does _not_ mean that one has no responsibility
for the PKGBUILD). You made a PKGBUILD for yourself and think that someone
out there might also find it useful. So you add it to the AUR as a
community contributor. A "maintainer" is someone who actually maintains a
binary package and/or has a trustworthy state, ie at least a TU.
Now to the status-quo. I see no sense at all adding a person to the
PKGBUILD who submitted it some years ago, because this person has nothing
more to do with the "new" PKGBUILD, even if it hasn't changed. Perhaps he
doesn't use Arch anymore. So why add him as a contributor? Only for the
credits? For example a package like the "kernel26-n130" one. I took the
config from the "kernel26-nc10" package, because it's almost the same
hardware (ok, I made some changes); the PKGBUILD itself is built upon the
stock kernel one. If it were for the credits then I'd had to add all the
persons who contributed these packages, though they have nothing to do
with this particular PKGBUILD. From this point of view taking care of all
the credits would go much too far and blurs the idea behind a
"contributor".
Further when someone disowns a PKGBUILD for some reason, he also drops the
responsibility for this package. So what's the reason of adding two or
more persons to the PKGBUILD who actually don't have anything more to do
with it?
However, I think the most easy and clear way is to add a single name with
mail address to the PKGBUILD - this means this person is in charge of it.

AMEN