[aur-general] Deletion of orphaned packages on AUR4

[Johannes Dewender]

Am 11.08.2015 um 14:08 schrieb Simon Hanna:
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 07:36:53AM +0000, Justin Dray wrote:
>> On Tue, 11 Aug 2015 17:09 Antonio Rojas <arojas at archlinux.org> wrote:
>>> Rob McCathie <korrode at gmail.com>
>>>  Wrote in message:
>>>> Just a query: Why were packages i added to AUR4, ensured were in good
>>>> working order (and made an enhancement to one of the packages compared
>>>> to the last release on AUR3), know are used by at least some users,
>>>> and then orphaned so some other interested party can take over
>>>> maintenance, were deleted from AUR4?
>>>>
>>>> compiz-gtk-standalone was actually the ONLY package on AUR4 that
>>>> provided the Compiz 0.8 series core component.
>>>> Since it's deletion there is now at least one package on AUR4 that has
>>>> unresolvable dependencies.
>>>> (eg. https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ccsm/ )
>>>
>>> I was wondering the same thing... Many of the kde-applications git
>>>  packages that I uploaded to AUR4 and then disowned ( but were
>>>  working fine) have been deleted, and I can't find any related
>>>  request.
>>>
>> I also disowned an LSI raid card utility a few days ago, and it got deleted
>> within 2 hours. What's going on with this?
>>
> I guess you should either be responsible for a package or not upload one at all.
> AUR3 was full of really bad orphaned packages.
> In AUR4 you can add co-maintainers or even publish your repos to some service as github and accept
> pull requests. 
> I personally don't see any reason behind uploading a package and then immediately disowning it.

Well, to give an example on my end: The LIO target (for iSCI and such)

For most of the LIO related packages there are original packages that
are open source, but with no good community management (got better though).
Then there are "free branch" forks as community projects.

I uploaded both to AUR3 and also to AUR4.
I maintain the free branch, because I think this is the better variant.
Having the original on AUR would be good, so I also updloaded these, but
I personally don't want to maintain these.

There are however some users that still want to use the original.
There aren't many changes either, since the original doesn't have
releases often.
(the free branch has lots of releases)

the "free branch":
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/targetcli-fb/
https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/python-rtslib-fb/

The "original" included:
lio-utils/lio-snmp
python2-rtslib
targetcli
(all deleted from AUR recently, lio-utils had more votes than any of the
free branch packages)

related wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ISCSI_Target#Setup_with_LIO_Target

I don't know why people want to use but not maintain the original packages.
Debian still uses the original variant, that alone is reason enough to
have the option to use the original on Arch Linux.


Long talk short:
No, I don't think orphaned packages should be deleted.


--
JonnyJD


PS:
for anybody interested in these particular PKGBUILDs:
https://github.com/JonnyJD/PKGBUILDs/tree/95f6d672ccf9baa151a9287a35b6f328073bd59b/_lio