[aur-general] AUR4, git, subtrees ELI5?

[Lukas Fleischer]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 at 21:39:52, Florian Bruhin wrote:
> * Joakim Hernberg <jhernberg at alchemy.lu> [2015-06-11 21:03:50 +0200]:
> > On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 13:36:54 -0500
> > Eli Schwartz <eschwartz93 at gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
> > > The suggestion was made that perhaps a tarball upload could be added
> > > which would create automatic commits to the git repository.
> > > Hopefully, something like that could be added, it would allow people
> > > who don't want to deal with the added complexity to continue on as
> > > though nothing had ever happened.
> > 
> > IMO this would be a good idea.
> 
> FWIW, +1 here as well.
> 
> I love git so I'm excited about all the new possibilites and feel like
> it's a very good improvement - but I can see how this makes it harder
> for people who'd prefer not getting into git just to contribute to the
> AUR.
> [...]

I am against adding anything that involves uploading a tarball. I am not
averse to including a set of utilities to help with working with to AUR
to [community], though (as long as there isn't anything similar to a
package manager for the AUR -- please let's not discuss this here).

There could be a simple tool called aur-pkgsubmit that roughly does the
following:

1. Check whether the current directory is the top-level directory of a
   Git repository, otherwise initialize a new repository.

2. Run `mksrcinfo` or something equivalent.

3. `git add` the PKGBUILD, .SRCINFO and other source files.

4. Commit the changes with a predefined commit message that can be
   edited. If the HEAD commit is not pushed yet, amend the previous
   commit instead of creating a new one.

5. Setup Git remotes according to the package base name, unless
   configured already.

6. Push the changes.

Users not knowing Git would be able to just update their PKGBUILDs and
run that tool to submit the package, without even knowing that Git is
used under the hood.

What do you think?

Regards,
Lukas