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

[Eli Schwartz]

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 4:01 PM, Lukas Fleischer <lfleischer at archlinux.org>
wrote:

> 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
>


That still requires packagers to go through several new hoops.

And I can see the benefit of allowing tarball uploads for the same reason
that the AUR3 included a web interface for adding new packages (rather than
having a hard requirement for using a helper).
e.g. uploading changes from another computer while traveling.

What happens if the package already exists? Say, the packager switches to a
new computer.

Does the tool also setup an ssh key and add that key to the packager's
account?

Installing tools to help manage AUR packages is definitely a useful option
to have -- but it would be nice if it wasn't *the only way* to do so.


I would like to see a method for submitting a tarball, having the aurweb
checkout the package's master branch, overwrite the index with the tarball
contents,  and commit that with a generic message.
(e.g. "upgpkg: ${pkgname} ${pkgver}-${pkgrel}").

Aside from the need to actually spend time implementing that, is there any
reason not to?

-- Eli Schwartz