[pacman-dev] Utility functions for PKGBUILDs

[Allan McRae]

On 08/06/12 17:31, Aaron DeVore wrote:
> Many other distros contain such functions. From what I've seen, the
> functions can help make packages more concise and less error prone.
> 
> I will be taking a university course in open source software
> development over the summer. We need to pick a project to work on
> during the course. Would adding utility functions to makepkg/PKGBUILDs
> be acceptable to Arch?


So...  I am all for reducing duplication of code, but have been quite
wary of implementing this  (there are _OLD_ bug reports about this in
the tracker).

The advantage of the PKGBUILD system is that you do not have to learn a
language to implement a package.  If you can build a package, you can
easily create a PKGBUILD for it.  Adding a library would not stop this
(you can still build with the full commands), but it would lead to
PKGBUILDs that required more than some basic bash knowledge to read.

I think that disadvantage outweighs any advantage from adding a library
to makepkg.

Now I never like to send a potential contributor away.  So have a look
at the bug tracker and wiki as see if there is something else you would
be interested in and let us know.  I am sure we can help you get going
on it.

Allan