[aur-general] The Arch Way

[Thomas Dziedzic]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Christoph <chrdr at gmx.at> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have just adopted the package xmind
> (http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=22394) because the former maintainer
> disowned it, and I am not shure which is the best way to build the package.
>
> There are three possibilities:
>
> 1) Building from source
> 2) Building from the "Portable" zip-file (see http://www.xmind.net/downloads/)
> 3) Building from the deb-files provided for Debian/Ubuntu (see
> http://www.xmind.net/downloads/)
>
> ad 1)
> This is what you would usually do, but according to
> http://groups.google.com/group/xmind-dev/browse_thread/thread/d68d0c8f30b4b42c
> the eclipse ide would be a prerequisite, so that would need a very large
> download if you do not already have installed eclipse (nearly 170 MB for
> eclipse plus 10 MB for the xmind source code!)
>
> ad 2)
> This was the way the former maintainer went. Download size: 75 MB
> The portable zip-file contains both the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions, so the
> PKGBUILD just had to copy the right files.
>
> ad 3)
> When I proposed (a year ago) to use the deb-files instead in order to have
> smaller downloads (each of them, 32-bit and the 64-bit has appr. 36 MB), the
> maintainer told me that this would be ugly and "not the Arch way", that he
> would not do such a thing. When I told him that I did not get the point of it,
> since the zip file equally just installed ready-built binaries, he did not
> respond to it.
>
> I still think that using the deb-files would - in this special case - be the
> best option. But of course I would never dare to deviate from "the Arch way"
> (since it is the way to world domination, as we all know ;-)).
>
> What do you think?
>
> Christoph
>

I always prefer a package build from source, but if it's provided in a
portable zip, that is a valid option in this instance. I would say go
with option 2.

Cheers!