[aur-general] Should nvidia(-beta)-all replace all the other nvidia-* packages in the AUR?

[Rémy Oudompheng]

2011/3/31 Det <nimetonmaili at gmail.com>:
> Not to keep bugging your mailboxes but I suppose the only real reasons
> for keeping all those nvidia-specific-kernel packages in the AUR boils
> down to these:
>
> 1) The user wants to install an Nvidia driver for a non-booted kernel,
> yet he doesn't want to install the driver for any the other kernels
> since the rest (or at least 1 of them) use Nouveau or similar.
>
> 2) The maintainer wants to show a link to his unofficial repository
> containing a precompiled version of his package.
>
> If these are enough to keep all that nvidia* stuff in the AUR then I
> don't mind. It'd just be nice, if somebody came up with a PKGBUILD
> that would ask the user which of the installed kernels he wanted the
> nvidia driver to be installed to. In addition the package could hold a
> simple text file listing all the unofficial repositories for using the
> precompiled packages instead or something ^^.

I am absolutely against replacing "reproducible" PKGBUILDs (those
which do not generate variables on-the-fly and can be built in clean
chroots and installed with predictable results) with
"non-reproducible" PKGBUILDs (those which require user interaction, or
use backquotes constructs to modify their source array or $pkgver).

For me the latter category of PKGBUILDs are only convenience solutions
(that are sometimes created to work around AUR limitations). They are
certainly useful, and most of time welcome in the AUR, but will never
in my mind replace true PKGBUILDs that correspond to deterministic and
well-defined packages.

A package should only be deleted if it is irrevocably broken or if a
package exists that provide the same functionality *at the same level
of reproducibility and predictability*.

Rémy.