[aur-general] AUR cleanup policy

[Karol Woźniak]

I am against removing "dead upstream" packages, unless upstream is
completely gone, i.e. there is no way to obtain necessary files. I am
maintaining at least two packages with upstream long dead, but (after my
patches, of course) they're still working and are used by some people.


On 19 June 2013 22:49, Connor Behan <connor.behan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 19/06/13 12:53 PM, Karol Blazewicz wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 8:57 PM, Xyne <xyne at archlinux.ca> wrote:
> >> On 2013-06-18 13:48 +0200
> >> Karol Blazewicz wrote:
> >>
> >>> What's the policy wrt to packages that have been submitted years ago
> >>> and are neither developed upstream nor maintained in the AUR since
> >>> then? Just let them be or get rid of them as they're of no use?
> >>> If there're old unmaintained packages foo and foo-git, is it OK to
> >>> request removing at least one of them? Which one?
> >>>
> >>> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/a4/
> >>> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/a4-bzr/
> >>>
> >>> The PKGBUILD need updating but it still builds and runs so I can pick
> >>> it up, update and orphan it. I don't know which filetypes does it open
> >>> (.odp is not recognized) and the editor doesn't work, so you can't
> >>> create a new presentation from scratch.
> >>> It's man page is of no help.
> >>
> >> Packages should only be removed if they conflict with policy (copies of
> >> official repo packages, malware, illegal packages) or if upstream is
> dead. Even
> >> if the PKGBUILD is an ancient relic from the age of Judd in need of a
> complete
> >> rewrite, we tend to leave them as placeholders.
> > AUR lacks 'mark package as broken' feature, I guess I can leave a
> > comment that says it's broken + post compile errors etc. Maybe
> > somebody will post a fix ...
> >
> > With regard to dead upstream, do I have to Google around to see if
> > they moved it somewhere or is it OK to lazily submit for deletion? I'm
> > talking about orphaned packages w/o an updated PKGBUILD in the
> > comments or at least a comment that says upstream moved to a different
> > place.
> >
>
> I would only submit such packages for deletion if their PKGBUILDs do a
> simple ./configure && make && make install. If there are non-trivial
> patches, even if they are long broken, I would leave it in the AUR. When
> someone comes along and says "I want to make this dead package work
> again" patches that once work can be a useful starting point.
>
>


-- 
Pozdrawiam,
    Karol Woźniak
aka Kenji Takahashi
 @  kenji.sx
"Don't shoot the messenger."