[aur-general] Are AUR VCS packages that depend on AUR VCS packages from other projects a good idea and who should decide on that ?

[Doug Newgard]

On Wed, 1 May 2019 12:38:41 +0200
Lone_Wolf <lonewolf at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On 01-05-2019 05:18, Doug Newgard via aur-general wrote:
> > You're still not getting it. The diff you gave shows that the only 
> > differences
> > are in the depends and madedepends arrays. If that's the only difference, then
> > there *IS NO DIFFERENCE*. A dep on "llvm-libs" is satisfied by llvm-libs-git,
> > so it works in both cases, just as is intended. There is no editing the
> > PKGBUILD needed by users of either option. That's how "provides" works.
> >
> > Scimmia  
> 
> 
> I know how conflicts/provides/replaces work.
> 
> It seems I failed to make clear that the major problems I see occur at 
> install and runtime, NOT at buildtime.
> 
> Here's another attempt to explain that.
> 
> 
> Hypothetical example
> 
> Assumptions :
> 
> mesa-git depends on llvm and llvm-libs
> 
> AUR only has one mesa-git package
> 
> User builds in clean chroot with devtools
> 
> User wants mesa feature X, finds they need to run mesa-git for that.
> 
> 
> User clones aur mesa-git and builds with extra-x86_64-build
> 
> makepkg sees llvm / llvm-libs dependencies are satisfied by extra/llvm 
> and extra/llvm-libs.
> 
> mesa-git is build against those versions
> 
> user installs mesa-git, pacman sees llvm-libs is needed and finds 
> extra/llvm-libs installed.
> 
> 
> User runs mesa-git, realizes feature X is not working.
> 
> Investigation reveals feature X is not supported by stable llvm, user 
> needs to built mesa-git against llvm-git.
> 
> User builds llvm-git + llvm-libs-git in clean chroot.
> 
> In order to use the llvm-git for mesa-git building they add the packages 
> manually to extra-x86_64-build.
> 
> They now have a mesa-git build against llvm-git and install that.
> 
> pacman sees mesa-git depends on llvm-libs , and that's satisfied by 
> extra/llvm-libs.
> 
> user tries again , mesa-git crashes.
> 
> 
> User asks for help on forum.
> 
> Someone that understands how mesa and llvm interact, suggests they try 
> installing llvm-libs-git .
> 
> User installs that, mesa-git works and feature X also works .
> 
> User is happy, tries to figure out how to avoid similar issues in future.
> 
> 
> Someone points out that the mesa-git crash was caused by pacman being 
> unaware which llvm-libs binary version was needed.
> 
> Simple solution : edit depends in PKGBUILD to have mesa-git depend on 
> llvm-git / llvm-libs-git .

Full stop. Solution is not to edit the PKGBUILD, solution is for the
theoretical user to not be replacing system libraries when they don't have a
clue what they're doing.

You're trying to overcomplicate the system to account for user stupidity. This
is Arch, stop doing that.

Scimmia