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

[Oon-Ee Ng]

On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 1:39 AM, Rémy Oudompheng
<remyoudompheng at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
I agree with the concept. However, in your opinion does
nvidia-beta-all fall under non-reproducible? It does different things
on different machines, but entirely in a non-interactive way. In case
you don't want to bother to take a look at the PKGBUILD (I wouldn't),
here's the basic thing it does:-

1. grep through files in /boot/ to find installed kernels
2. compile the NVIDIA driver for those kernels

It cannot be compiled in a chroot (unless the requisite kernels are
available), but it seems to satisfy the rest of your criteria.

The discussion may be moot, however, since I just searched through the
AUR for nvidia and noticed most of said packages still have
maintainers (did not check whether they were out-of-date). No problem,
then.

I could possibly simply add white/black-listing to the PKGBUILD to
cater for those who want nouveau on specific systems (though AFAIK
this would require symlinking of libgl...). I hate PKGBUILDs which
interactively ask for anything, there should be a sane default
non-interactive behaviour, but also simple tweakables.