[aur-general] ttf-google-webfonts{,-distilled,-git,-hg} mess

Jason St. John jstjohn at purdue.edu
Mon Apr 1 18:16:05 EDT 2013


I am the current maintainer of the AUR package
ttf-google-webfonts-hg[4], and I'm bothered by the mess of various
packages there are for Google's Web Fonts project. It's not at all
KISS in its current state.

There are currently four different AUR packages[1][2][3][4] that
essentially supply the same files, and all four packages conflict with
each other. Around August of 2012, the package named
ttf-google-webfonts[1] was orphaned, and user w0ng created a GitHub
repository[5] that mirrors the Mercurial repository[6] on Google Code
(why?). Then, the new maintainer changed the original
ttf-google-webfonts package from a VCS-type package that simply lacked
"-hg" in the name to a package that pulls tarballs from w0ng's GitHub
repo[5].

As you can see in the comments for ttf-google-webfonts[1], this has
caused all sorts of confusion and messages about the package being
out-of-date or having invalid checksums. To get around these issues,
user epinephrine created the package ttf-google-webfonts-git[3] that
clones w0ng's GitHub repo[5] instead of pulling tarballs from it,
which significantly reduces the maintenance required on the package.

Then, user Gently created a package named
ttf-google-webfonts-distilled[2] that pulls a tarball from w0ng's
GitHub repo[5] and only installs a small subset of the fonts therein.

Shortly after ttf-google-webfonts[1] was changed from being a
Mercurial-based package and not liking the direction that the package
was taking, I reuploaded the original ttf-google-webfonts package as
ttf-google-webfonts-hg[4] for people that simply wanted the old
package back that uses the actual Google Web Fonts repository to
download the files.

To clean up this mess, I propose that ttf-google-webfonts-distilled[2]
and ttf-google-webfonts-git[3] be deleted outright, for what should be
obvious reasons. I also propose that ttf-google-webfonts[1] be deleted
because of how frequently the Web Fonts project is updated and because
the project lacks version numbers. If people really feel strongly
about keeping that maintenance nightmare, then let them have it, but I
really don't see what advantage it provides over the original
ttf-google-webfonts-hg[4] other than one less makedepends.

I apologize for the huge email, but this situation really is a mess.

[1] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-google-webfonts/
[2] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-google-webfonts-distilled/
[3] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-google-webfonts-git/
[4] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-google-webfonts-hg/
[5] https://github.com/w0ng/googlefontdirectory
[6] https://code.google.com/p/googlefontdirectory/

Jason


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