[aur-general] Merging packages into a split package (was: pkg deletion request)

[Lukas Fleischer]

On Sat, 31 May 2014 at 21:08:34, Yichao Yu wrote:
> [...]
> > It is a bit unfortunate that this process makes merging a bit more
> > complicated and results in packages being unavailable for a short
> > transition period (see steps 1 to 3). I didn't come up with something
> > better yet. Should we give TUs extra power and allow for uploading
> > PKGBUILDs that automatically overwrite (and merge) packages? The
> > downside is that this would be quite complicated to implement and we
> > would have to ensure that no strange things can happen, e.g. partly
> > overwriting another split package by replacing a subset of its packages.
> > Trusted Users would also have to have a very close look at the packages
> > before merging to ensure that no malicious takeover happens.
> >
> > Any suggestions are welcome.
> 
> One thing to add is that if you own all the other packages, you can
> change their pkgname (to sth random) while keeping the same pkgbase.
> You can then upload the new package with all the pkgnames and let a TU
> to merge the original (not empty and useless) packages to the new one.
> This way at least it is not necessary to wait for a TU to make the new
> package work.
> 

Good idea! Actually, that should already work: Just add a pkgbase
variable to the PKGBUILDs and change their pkgname, e.g. by appending
the string "-old". So, another (maybe better) work flow is:

1. Add pkgbase variables to each package using the current package name
   as package base name.

2. Change the pkgname of each package to something new, e.g. by adding
   the suffix "-old".

3. Upload the new split package.

4. File a request to merge the "-old" packages (more precisely: the old
   package bases that only contain one package with the suffix "-old")
   into the new split package.

> >
> >>
> >> Thanks, artoo
> >>
>