[aur-requests] [PRQ#22089] Merge Request for v8-r

[Jan Marvin Garbuszus]

V8 offers a variety of configuration options. The v8-r package that I 
maintain is specifically tailored to the needs of R users. It is 
required by the R-package V8, which itself is a dependency of other 
R-packages. Therefore v8-r is explicitly mentioned in the documentation 
of the R-Package. While the V8-Package, which is recently maintained by 
Ariel who is the author of this merge request, has a different build 
configuration and a static monolithic core. (Not sure why this ain't no 
major difference to you.)

The current configuration of the AUR-package v8 would make it impossible 
to build the R-Package. While it is possible to make appropriate changes 
to build the R-Package with a monolithic V8 (which is exactly what I did 
recently and which is now documented as a variant in the R-Package), 
these are at least medium-term goals that would break the existing R 
ecosystem in the short term. In the interest of the R users I therefore 
have to veto the merge request.

I'm not against unifying v8 builds and have argued in this direction 
with the former maintainer of the AUR-package. Though V8 is a mighty 
package which offers multiple build configurations and there simply is 
no one size fits all.

On 10/31/20 8:57 AM, notify at aur.archlinux.org wrote:
> relrel [1] filed a request to merge v8-r [2] into v8 [3]:
> 
> I don't see any major difference between v8-r and v8, except that v8
> is currently in stable version (as intended), and v8-r is in canary
> version.
> I assume that the canary version is not a hard constraint, and since
> stable is preferred over canary for stability and security reasons,  I
> suggest to merge v8-r into v8 in order to reduce unnecessary
> duplication and confusion among users.
> 
> [1] https://aur.archlinux.org/account/relrel/
> [2] https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/v8-r/
> [3] https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/v8/
>