[aur-general] Updating MATE Packages

[Kyle Terrien]

Sean Fennell <eadrom> wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> A couple weeks ago I found out that Martin was no longer going to be
> able to maintain the MATE desktop packages for Arch Linux [1] [2].  I
> had a chat with Martin on IRC and confirmed that MATE would need a new
> maintainer.  Since then I've been working on updating the relevant MATE
> PKGBUILD's from 1.12 to 1.14.  I've been getting spun up with how Arch
> maintains packages, learning more about the PKGBUILD creation and
> updating processes, and getting set up on the various mailing lists and
> my AUR profile.
> 
> The question comes now how do I get these updated PKGBUILD's to the
> community?  If the packages are bumped down from [Community] to the AUR,
> I would be more than happy to maintain them there.  If/when I earn TU
> status, I would then move them back to the official [Community]
> repository.  The drawback there is a major DE would no longer be in an
> official Arch repository and would require users manually building each
> updated PKGBUILD or to use an AUR helper.  Alternatively, perhaps a
> current TU could use my updated PKGBUILD's to get MATE 1.14 out to the
> community while I work on earning TU status and can then maintain the
> packages directly at a later date.
> 
> To head off any ideas about my motivations here, I am not trying to
> leverage this issue to bypass or fasttrack past any TU requirements.  I
> realize I'm pretty much unknown in the Arch community.  I would like to
> change that with good work.
> 
> To the matter at hand, what is going to be the best way to get the MATE
> packages updated?  What is my next step in that process?  I'm eager to
> get my hands dirty helping out with maintaining MATE (and other packages
> as well).
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Sean Fennell <eadrom>
> 
> [1]
> https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/aur-general/2016-May/032306.html
> [2]
> https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/4kakzk/

As a recent convert to MATE (coming from XFCE), I wish you the best of
luck.

It looks like Manjaro is maintaining their own MATE packages [0].  I am
not sure if you were aware of this, but if you were not then this should
help tremendously.

I experimented a little and successfully built all the GTK2 (stable)
versions of 1.14 [1].  Most of the effort was building things in the
right order (Take a look at make-gtk2.sh in [1].).  I did not need to
modify any of the PKGBUILDS from Manjaro.  I hope you may find this
useful.

MATE is certainly seeing far more active development than XFCE at this
point.  XFCE is unfortunately making the Netscape mistake of focusing on
rewriting all their code so it compiles with GTK3.  (In fact, they have
no new features planned for the next release.)  It will most likely be
years before we see new things and fixes come out of XFCE (and the GTK3
change will likely introduce more regressions).

So, MATE is like a breath of fresh air.  Personally, I would really like
to see MATE stay in community where everyone can easily install it.  The
way I see the problem, all we need to do is build the PKGBUILDS from
Manjaro and have someone from Arch officially vet them.  Will a TU
please help us?

--Kyle

[0]: https://github.com/manjaro/packages-community/tree/master/mate
[1]: https://gitlab.com/KlipKyle/mate-pkgbuilds

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