[aur-general] pkgstats and unused [community] packages

[Loui Chang]

On Wed 27 Oct 2010 08:35 -0700, Aaron Bull Schaefer wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I wouldn't say that. I would say that the only users who matter are the
> > ones that participate. For example you can't justly complain about the
> > results of an election if you haven't educated yourself about it and
> > voted.
> 
> The thing is, we're not voting on a single package that we feel is
> better than another package, so we're not looking for informed
> opinions...we're trying to establish objective/accurate usage numbers
> for every single package across all Arch Linux users (or at least a
> statistically appropriate sample of Arch Linux users), which is
> unrelated to people's activity in the community.

Sorry that wasn't meant as a direct example. I'm just saying if people
don't voice what packages are important, then Devs and TUs shouldn't
have to worry about maintaining them so much. The larger community can
maintain them in the AUR. Arch is based on community involvement and
participation. If something isn't done by a TU or dev, then a user
can take the initiative to implement it him/herself. Otherwise don't
complain.

> > Let's be clear here. This isn't about removal of packages. It's about
> > moving packages from one repo to another. Community to aur/unsupported.
> 
> I don't think there's any confusion over these semantics, and I'd
> point out that there's a large difference between moving a package
> from Community to Unsupported compared with moving a package from
> Extra to Community. The fact that Community packages are available by
> default to all Arch users in binary form is a huge plus...the AUR is a
> fantastic resource, but there's no built-in way for users to track
> changes in Unsupported automatically. Also, moving packages from
> Community to Unsupported can be confusing for users who are expecting
> binary updates and don't use a wrapper like yaourt that will tell them
> about the updates after we remove packages from Community.

Indeed, binary packages are quite convenient but I believe that should
be a privilege reserved for the more commonly used packages. It is
unfortunate that we lack a good universal system to track and update
source based packages, but I don't think it necessarily means unused
packages should remain in a binary repo

I expect our savvy users to be able to figure out what's happening,
especially if we ask for their input and announce any moves beforehand.