[aur-general] Split packages

[Chi Hsuan Yen]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 9:54 PM, Vanush Misha Paturyan via aur-general <
aur-general at archlinux.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 01:14:14PM +0200, Bruno Pagani wrote:
> >
> >
> > Le 22 août 2016 12:53:04 GMT+02:00, Lukas Mosimann <mlukas at ethz.ch> a
> écrit :
> > >Hi all,
> > >
> > >Christoph Gysin came up with the problem of split packages that
> > >conflict
> > >each other, which is implementable in a PKGBUILD.
> > >
> > >As an example consider
> > >https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=pasystray which
> > >defines pasystray and pasystray-gtk2 which cannot be installed both at
> > >the same time. Neither aura nor yaourt supports such packages.
> > >
> > >There is no other package known to me, but there should be some
> > >clarification, whether such a package is allowed.
> > >
> > >In my opinion, already the name "split package" indicates that these
> > >should not conflict, otherwise it would not just be a split package,
> > >but
> > >rather something like a "versioned package".
> > >
> > >In order to come to a conclusion for the discussion in the comments of
> > >that AUR package, I would kindly ask you for your thoughts concerning
> > >this problem.
> > >
> > >Best,
> > >Lukas
> >
> > AFAIR, the intent of split packages is to avoid downloading the
> > source/building multiple times when possible in case you want to
> > install part or all of the corresponding packages.
> >
> > Thus, I think there is no point in conflicting split packages, and
> > regarding your example, that should then be two different packages.
>
> But then you will have two PKGBUILDs that only differ by few lines
> within the build() function, and two separate repositories to support
> them. They are not two different packages, they are the same package
> but compiled differently. I think it makes sence to have one PKGBUILD
> that can procude different packages, and they have to conflict with
> each other to make sure someone does not install both at the same
> time. If tools cannot handle it then tools should be modified to allow
> for this workflow.
>
> just my two cents.
>
> Misha
>
> --
> Vanush "Misha" Paturyan
> Senior Technical Officer
> Room 120
> Computer Science Department
> Eolas Bulding
> Maynooth University
> Maynooth
>
> ext: 4539
>

FWIW, I have a Python script [1] that generates multiple PKGBUILDs from a
template file PKGBUILD.template and a parameter file pkgs.json. I wrote
this script to manage Python packages targetting different Python versions.
(for example python2-xxx and python-xxx) It may be helpful in such cases,
too.

[1]
https://github.com/yan12125/aur/blob/master/scripts/generate_packages_from_template.py