[aur-general] [extra] repository cleanup

[Pierre Schmitz]

On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:43:28 +0100, Heiko Baums <lists at baums-on-web.de>
wrote:
> Am Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:33:32 +0100
> schrieb Andrea Scarpino <andrea at archlinux.org>:
> 
>> Hi DEVs/TUs,
>> currently we have 700 (counting both arches and any) orphans packages
>> in [extra].
>> As member of the orphans team, I made a list[1] of these packages and
>> I'd like to move them to Unsupported.
>> If some DEV wants to keep a package simply cross it out (adoption is
>> not required, but it would be nice) or reply to this mail.
>> If some TU wants to maintain a package in [community], please write
>> the name into the "Candidate to [community]" section, *DO NOT* cross
>> it out. Or reply to this mail.
>>
>> I think that a week is enough time for this job. 17th November I will
>> move the remaining packages to Unsupported and the candidates to
>> [community].
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:Repo_Cleanup
> 
> You should really think about that. There are many of the most
> important, oldest and best known packages in this list like dia, ding,
> xboard, eboard, epdfview, slmodem etc.
> 
> In other words, your list is likely the half of the distro.
> 
> If you would put all of them to AUR then you could give up Arch Linux,
> because then it has almost no advantage over Gentoo, that is, then will
> Arch Linux become a second Gentoo, because the users will have to
> compile a lot of (most of the) important packages manually.
> 
> And the reason why I switched from Gentoo to Arch Linux about 3 or 4
> years ago after using Gentoo for about 6 years was that I was sick of
> compiling everything and that Arch Linux was a binary distribution.
> 
> So if you would really do this clean up and move all these packages to
> AUR then I could and most likely would switch back to Gentoo.
> 
> So really, please, reconsider your idea of doing this massive and
> pointless cleanup.
> 
> Btw., ding was updated recently.
> 
> Heiko

Please calm down and first of all: Nobody cares if you are switching to
another distro.

These packages are orphaned which means no dev or TU has an interest in
maintaining them. These cleanups are also meant as some kind of reminder
to adopt needed or popular packages. Keeping unmaintained packages is of
no use; it'll also increase the workload on other e.g. on so name bump
rebuilds.

If people think some of these packages are important, they should
simply step up and become a TU to maintain them. It's just that easy. Or
look at it the other way: why should a dev or tu maintain a package that
he does not use or is interested in? In the end we do this mostly for
ourselves and not for anybody else.

We could compare this list to pkgstats results to be able to look
harder for a new maintainer for popular packages.

-- 
Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre