[pacman-dev] Roadmap for 3.1

[Dan McGee]

Comments and some of my own stuff here.

On 3/28/07, Andrew Fyfe <andrew at neptune-one.net> wrote:
> Aaron Griffin wrote:
> > Looks like it's time to move towards a 3.1 release.  Dan and I both
> > have a lot of items listed in our TODO lists, though most of them are
> > code changes (doesn't affect the end user much).
> >
> > So I'd like to open the floor up for ideas - what *functional* changes
> > interest you all, as a user of pacman?
> >
> > I'm going to take some input here, and then compose a list of what I'd
> > like to do for the 3.1 release.
> >
> > Keep in mind that, going forward, I'd like to do quick, smaller
> > releases (every 1-2 months would be ideal) so not everything will get
> > done right away.
> >
> > Also, as a side note, we're probably going to be moving to using git
> > for development - making it easier for other users to contribute
> > patches and things like that (still kinda pending on some side
> > projects I'm working on, but I digress).
> >
>
> Cleanup scripts/*
>         - move msg* error warning in_array check_* out of makepkg so all
>           scripts can make use of them.
>         - use tput for coloured output
>         - move BUILDSCRIPT PKGEXT DB_COMPRESSION into makepkg.conf
>         - gettext support (Giovanni Scafora has done some work on this)

Yes, I like most of this, and it would be good to see in 3.1.
Especially if patches start rolling in.

> - move pacman.lck to /var/run (that's where lock files belong)

Easy fix, so we can definitely do this, and it makes sense. The only
issue may be when a non-root user is running pacman and using --root,
but in that case the whole filesystem they are writing too should have
different permissions anyway.

My list, which may duplicate things above:
* Resolve issues with permissions checking. Instead of flat-out
requiring root, we should do smart permissions checking- can the user
write here? Can they view this? etc.
* Gettext support in makepkg, and clean up the way we use gettext. We
really don't need any debug message in libalpm translated, and the
ideal would be to keep all translation to the front end pacman part.
* Fakeroot patches and improvement for makepkg. Thanks Andrew!
* A few other local/i18n issues- notably the progress bar being in the
wrong place, etc.
* Standardized exit codes for pacman and makepkg. These should be set,
documented, and utilized in scripts that look at output codes.

Way down the line is function cleanup- libalpm has a lot of
duplication and functions that are not documented well at all, and we
should change that.

-Dan