[aur-general] Questions about some of my packages being adopted in [community]

Sun Sep 30 18:51:47 UTC 2018

Hi all,

Thanks for the comments and explanations.

Firstly, I wanna say that I am not asking for special treatment or
anything. Just wanted to discuss in detail what is going on. Secondly, a
few comments stood out to me (in no particular order).

I actually want to move the whole "root" tree, but considering its
> number I just started with the easier "leaf" ones.

This is what I suspected to be honest. The packages that were pulled were
way too specific. Well, if you're going to do this, then I'd like to have a
conversation about it. (below)

Regarding FS#60248
>   Just release the python2 version of the package in the AUR.

Sure, just wanted to be sure that's the expected approach.

What original intention? Packages don't need to meet any intention.
> They should be packaged acording to the guidelines

Of course, they do - packages exist for a reason and the way they are
packaged expresses the intention - feature support, type of build,
structure, etc. All of that is beyond scope of packaging standards.

This is fairly common -- while it is nice to get in touch with the AUR
> maintainer, we hardly need *permission* to package something for the
> repos. As always, you can report bugs with the official packages.

I was not implying *permission* is needed, this is not the point - the
point is letting people, who put their time in, know what's up. In any
case, I listed this as an observation, hence the reason my email was
prompted.

Denied resolution?
> ...
> I fail to see how you're being "denied" anything.

Call it what you want, I tried to re-open all 3 bugs but was denied with
little to no comment/explanation. I wanted to know if python2 is going to
be added by Felix or not - instead I was scolded at the bug and here in
emails. The other bug is a bug as confirmed - also denied to re-open
without explanation/investigation. The third bug was re-opened by Filipe
after my initial email - no need to bash me further about it. So all bugs
were closed & denied to re-open until I made a fuss about it here. That to
me is 'denied'.

Whatever we want.

Of course, but not helpful. I'll explain.

You don't get to act as some sort of concerned citizen here to protect
> your packages from the incompetent Devs/TUs when your PKGBUILD contains
> this junk.
> (Sorry for being harsh, but this is the reaction you invite when you set
> yourself up as the superior packager.)

I am not pertaining to be a superior packager and I am not calling anyone
incompetent. This is completely beside the point. I will explain below. But
to address the state of this particular package - it was added 2 weeks ago
in a rush to push a new version upstream, because I maintain my packages
well. This package and another from same time around need a complete
rewrite, which I'm aware of. And this particular style of package was
copied from another [community] package a long time ago, things have
changed as it was pointed out to me here in the AUR. I had intentions to
fix it as soon as I had time. Picking out one package out of the whole
stack, which I have not had time to properly deal with, proves nothing, but
that you aim to shame, rather than to understand where I'm coming from, why
I am worried and that I'm actually looking to be heard and help.

That's a message I entered manually each time, with respect :)

This was not a complaint. Thanks, that's actually the only clue I had my
packages were going somewhere and not just randomly deleted.

I believe that is not true. I even enabled more functionality in
> libafterimage, actually.

You mean when you removed `--disable-svg` flag? I might be wrong, but I
think there was a reason to leave it disabled. You'd have to check comments
or Gentoo/Fedora package to be sure.

I do not intend to package the python2 variant. For the other two, I
> have replied in the tasks.

Thanks for making that clear.

So to make all of this more clear to everyone. I took on the task to
maintain CERN's ROOT a couple of years ago and since then I've involved
myself heavily, I'm a contributor to the project and I use it daily in my
work. Colleagues at CERN that use Arch Linux have been depending on me for
this. I have enabled a lot of new features and worked with upstream to make
even more functionality, bug fixes, etc. Currently, I am working on two new
features with upstream, namely to allow for full build without internal
dependencies, only external, and secondly for python2 and python3
simultaneous support. This is semi possible at the moment, but depends on
me having the time to debug fully 3 packages - Pythia, XRootD & ROOT
itself. On top of that I have shipped several other projects related to
this for people that work on Arch Linux to be able to enjoy - Docker
images, GitLab CIs, SciKit-HEP packages like uproot and so on.

All of this is not a brag, it's not to say I am a better packager, and I am
not asking for special attention. But what I want to make something clear -
not all things can be said in a PKGBUILD. Packaging intentions matter and
simply taking over packages without looking for/listening to the
maintainer's comments may be detrimental. For example, the new features I
worked to bring to the ROOT ecosystem and ones which I plan to work on in
the future are obviously not part of my PKGBUILD.

There's precedence for maintainers of specialized software in the AUR to be

sponsored to become a Trusted User (though it seems there's a preexisting

relationship?).

I am not sure how much this applies to me in this case, but if it does I
can say the following. I am willing to apply for a Trusted User to maintain
ROOT's stack for Arch. I use the ROOT software on a daily basis. I take
great care of the package (the whole stack actually) as my work depends on
it. I have a test bench and people in my professional area use it and
depend on me to bring improvements and new possibilities. I have involved
myself and consider it an on-going duty. I have the skills and know-how to
maintain the ROOT stack and I can say with certainty that AUR's ROOT
package is only second to Fedora's package across other distros. But I also
understand it is not perfect and am interested in making it better as I've
shown previously here and to its users.

If that is not an option, however, then I would like to say to Felix thanks
for taking over and to take `root-extra` as the template for his package
and drop all other variants. This was always the plan after a few things
finally got merged upstream. I can go into detail privately.

Regards,
Konstantin

On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 7:49 PM Konstantin Gizdov <arch at kge.pw> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Thanks for the comments and explanations.
>
> Firstly, I wanna say that I am not asking for special treatment or
> anything. Just wanted to discuss in detail what is going on. Secondly, a
> few comments stood out to me (in no particular order).
>
> I actually want to move the whole "root" tree, but considering its
>> number I just started with the easier "leaf" ones.
>
> This is what I suspected to be honest. The packages that were pulled were
> way too specific. Well, if you're going to do this, then I'd like to have a
> conversation about it. (below)
>
> Regarding FS#60248
>>   Just release the python2 version of the package in the AUR.
>
> Sure, just wanted to be sure that's the expected approach.
>
> What original intention? Packages don't need to meet any intention.
>> They should be packaged acording to the guidelines
>
> Of course, they do - packages exist for a reason and the way they are
> packaged expresses the intention - feature support, type of build,
> structure, etc. All of that is beyond scope of packaging standards.
>
> This is fairly common -- while it is nice to get in touch with the AUR
>> maintainer, we hardly need *permission* to package something for the
>> repos. As always, you can report bugs with the official packages.
>
> I was not implying *permission* is needed, this is not the point - the
> point is letting people, who put their time in, know what's up. In any
> case, I listed this as an observation, hence the reason my email was
> prompted.
>
> Denied resolution?
>> ...
>> I fail to see how you're being "denied" anything.
>
> Call it what you want, I tried to re-open all 3 bugs but was denied with
> little to no comment/explanation. I wanted to know if python2 is going to
> be added by Felix or not - instead I was scolded at the bug and here in
> emails. The other bug is a bug as confirmed - also denied to re-open
> without explanation/investigation. The third bug was re-opened by Filipe
> after my initial email - no need to bash me further about it. So all bugs
> were closed & denied to re-open until I made a fuss about it here. That to
> me is 'denied'.
>
> Whatever we want.
>
> Of course, but not helpful. I'll explain.
>
> You don't get to act as some sort of concerned citizen here to protect
>> your packages from the incompetent Devs/TUs when your PKGBUILD contains
>> this junk.
>> (Sorry for being harsh, but this is the reaction you invite when you set
>> yourself up as the superior packager.)
>
> I am not pertaining to be a superior packager and I am not calling anyone
> incompetent. This is completely beside the point. I will explain below. But
> to address the state of this particular package - it was added 2 weeks ago
> in a rush to push a new version upstream, because I maintain my packages
> well. This package and another from same time around need a complete
> rewrite, which I'm aware of. And this particular style of package was
> copied from another [community] package a long time ago, things have
> changed as it was pointed out to me here in the AUR. I had intentions to
> fix it as soon as I had time. Picking out one package out of the whole
> stack, which I have not had time to properly deal with, proves nothing, but
> that you aim to shame, rather than to understand where I'm coming from, why
> I am worried and that I'm actually looking to be heard and help.
>
> That's a message I entered manually each time, with respect :)
>
> This was not a complaint. Thanks, that's actually the only clue I had my
> packages were going somewhere and not just randomly deleted.
>
> I believe that is not true. I even enabled more functionality in
>> libafterimage, actually.
>
> You mean when you removed `--disable-svg` flag? I might be wrong, but I
> think there was a reason to leave it disabled. You'd have to check comments
> or Gentoo/Fedora package to be sure.
>
> I do not intend to package the python2 variant. For the other two, I
>> have replied in the tasks.
>
> Thanks for making that clear.
>
> So to make all of this more clear to everyone. I took on the task to
> maintain CERN's ROOT a couple of years ago and since then I've involved
> myself heavily, I'm a contributor to the project and I use it daily in my
> work. Colleagues at CERN that use Arch Linux have been depending on me for
> this. I have enabled a lot of new features and worked with upstream to make
> even more functionality, bug fixes, etc. Currently, I am working on two new
> features with upstream, namely to allow for full build without internal
> dependencies, only external, and secondly for python2 and python3
> simultaneous support. This is semi possible at the moment, but depends on
> me having the time to debug fully 3 packages - Pythia, XRootD & ROOT
> itself. On top of that I have shipped several other projects related to
> this for people that work on Arch Linux to be able to enjoy - Docker
> images, GitLab CIs, SciKit-HEP packages like uproot and so on.
>
> All of this is not a brag, it's not to say I am a better packager, and I
> am not asking for special attention. But what I want to make something
> clear - not all things can be said in a PKGBUILD. Packaging intentions
> matter and simply taking over packages without looking for/listening to the
> maintainer's comments may be detrimental. For example, the new features I
> worked to bring to the ROOT ecosystem and ones which I plan to work on in
> the future are obviously not part of my PKGBUILD.
>
> There's precedence for maintainers of specialized software in the AUR to be
>
> sponsored to become a Trusted User (though it seems there's a preexisting
>
> relationship?).
>
> I am not sure how much this applies to me in this case, but if it does I
> can say the following. I am willing to apply for a Trusted User to maintain
> ROOT's stack for Arch. I use the ROOT software on a daily basis. I take
> great care of the package (the whole stack actually) as my work depends on
> it. I have a test bench and people in my professional area use it and
> depend on me to bring improvements and new possibilities. I have involved
> myself and consider it an on-going duty. I have the skills and know-how to
> maintain the ROOT stack and I can say with certainty that AUR's ROOT
> package is only second to Fedora's package across other distros. But I also
> understand it is not perfect and am interested in making it better as I've
> shown previously here and to its users.
>
> If that is not an option, however, then I would like to say to Felix
> thanks for taking over and to take `root-extra` as the template for his
> package and drop all other variants. This was always the plan after a few
> things finally got merged upstream. I can go into detail privately.
>
> Regards,
> Konstantin
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 6:16 AM Felix Yan <felixonmars at archlinux.org>
> wrote:
>
>> On 9/30/18 3:57 AM, Konstantin Gizdov wrote:
>> > 3. The packages do not provide the same functionality as before, but
>> > conflict with the AUR ones.
>>
>> I believe that is not true. I even enabled more functionality in
>> libafterimage, actually.
>>
>> > 4. I wasn't told anything - my AUR package was deleted with a 'thanks
>> for
>> > maintaining it' message.
>>
>> That's a message I entered manually each time, with respect :)
>>
>> > 5. I've reported a few bugs FS#6024{6,7,8}, but have been denied
>> resolution.
>>
>> I do not intend to package the python2 variant. For the other two, I
>> have replied in the tasks.
>>
>> >  - Why?
>> >  - How many & which will be put into [community]?
>>
>> I actually want to move the whole "root" tree, but considering its
>> number I just started with the easier "leaf" ones.
>>
>> >  - How can I effectively communicate the nuts & bolts to the new
>> > maintenaners so to say, to make sure users still get what's expected?
>>
>> By opening bugs or send me an email directly if it's urgent.
>>
>> Sorry for the confusion and late reply, it was very late in my TZ when I
>> work on the packages.
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Felix Yan
>>
>>