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

[Lukas Fleischer]

On Fri, 30 May 2014 at 14:03:00, artux wrote:
> [...]
> Suppose I want to move/merge a single pkgbuild to a split build, is that 
> possible? Will the pkgbase change, so the single pkgbuld will 
> "disappear" automatically? Or the other way round, I want to move a pkg 
> from split build to single build?
> Is there any documentation for this kind of stuff?

The logic is as follows:

* Package bases can be overwritten by their maintainers and by TUs.

* Packages can only be overwritten if they already belong to the package
  base of the submitted package. That means that you cannot upload a
  PKGBUILD containing a package which is already part of another package
  base.

So in order to replace several packages with a split package, you will
need to:

1. Upload a (basically empty) meta package with the new package base
   (unless you want to use a package base that already exists, e.g. the
   name of the first package to merge).

2. File a request to merge every package into the new split package.

3. Upload a proper split package to replace the meta package.

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.

> 
> Thanks, artoo
>