[aur-general] How to see the interest in a package (other than votes)?

[oliver]

On Fri, Mar 01, 2013 at 09:47:28AM +0100, Elena ``of Valhalla'' wrote:
> On 2013-02-28 at 21:09:30 +0100, oliver wrote:
> > is it possible to see the number of downloads of packages from AUR,
> > so that it can be detected, how much interest in a package exists?
> 
> I suspect that the use case of "download from AUR, try to build 
> and install, (possibly even fail, or just decide that another 
> alternative fits better), delete the package, forget about it" 
> is not so rare, expecially with old orphaned packages.

Does "orphaned" mean old, orphaned packages?
I saw some entries, where maintenance was stopped because of
"not time".
If such a package has 6 votes and 200 hundred downloads,
it looks more accepted/used as one with 0 votes and 7 downloads.

If both cover interesting topic (maybe the same topic),
it's not guaranteed, but maybe more likely that the one
with more votes and downloads might need a maintainer.


> 
> The system used in Debian to estimate the popularity of packages, 
> popcon_, gives the number of installed packages, but also what IMHO 
> is an even more important stats: the number of recently used 
> installation.

Aha. But is that really more accurate?
A new installation could mean someone who is installing
Linux the first time, and then tries some packages...
...is there also a statistics about package removal?

> 
> This requires voluntary submissions, the installation of an ad-hoc 
> program and working atime on /usr, so it is not perfect and probably 
> not something that arch can adopt, but IMHO worth considering as a
> comparison.
> 
> .. _popcon: http://popcon.debian.org/
> 
> -- 
> Elena ``of Valhalla''

Thanks you.


Ciao,
  Oliver