[aur-general] Idea for AUR improvement

[Xyne]

Hugo Osvaldo Barrera wrote:

> I think a list of "packages I've contributed to" (similar to "my
> packages", but also includes packages you've orphaned) in AUR would
> solve this, and be helpful for other stuff.
> 
> If a user leaves Arch for some reason, and comes back, IF he's
> intereseted in re-adopted his orphaned packages, he'll just see that
> list, and adopt them.
> 
> Currently, it's pretty hard to know what packages you've contributed to
> in the past, and it is something nice to have.

That poses two problems already raised in this thread:

1) privacy issues: not everyone will want to be permanently associated with
   packages

2) backend complexity: each package would have to store a list of contributors
   in the database

1 would not actually be a list of contributors, only a list of current and
former maintainers, as those who contribute via comments will not be tracked in
this way. It thus defeats the goal of giving credit, but it would still work to
track previous maintainers.

I lean towards the privacy argument on this and would prefer that we don't
track every maintainer, but I don't see it as a big deal.

I also think that tracking the last maintainer would be much more useful than
the submitter. Currently someone could easily adopt orphaned packakges, insert
malicious code and then orphan them again. A last-maintainer field would enable
use to determine who did that and deal with it.

Now, switching submitter for last maintainer might be easy enough to do on
the backend.