[aur-dev] AUR generation next?

[Lukas Fleischer]

On Mon, 06 Jan 2014 at 23:12:32, Karol Blazewicz wrote:
> [...]
> Some users suggest transforming AUR into a wiki, some would like to
> use git for pull requests etc., others support an annual wipe i.e. AUR
> is moved into a read-only state (and moved to aur-old address) and
> maintainers are asked to resubmit PKGBUILDs - this would keep old
> comments and votes and over time only the PKGBUILDs that actually are
> maintained would be kept in the AUR.
> 
> 
> What are the thoughts of the AUR overlords about all this? If you give
> such grassroots effort a NACK, there's no point in the discussion,
> until further notice.

I am generally open to every suggestion that improves the AUR in any
way. However, these ideas need to be discussed either on this mailing
list or on the bug tracker (and the mailing list might be a better idea
unless you already have a very precise idea of how the improvement looks
like).

Some comments on the things you already mentioned:

* Before thinking about migrating to another software, we need to
  balance pros and cons. A big counterargument to every big change is
  the need for migration which is often cumbersome. The most popular
  features of the AUR are the package search, the package details view,
  and the possibility to download packages (maybe also upload and
  comments). Does a wiki make these things easier?

* I like the idea of better Git integration. It requires quite some
  work, though. See FS#23010 [1] for details.

* What is the benefit of an automated removal of all packages? How is
  removing dozens of packages better than having dozens of packages that
  do not work but often only need slight changes? Are you rather talking
  about marking packages, that haven't been touched for a while, as
  "inactive" and hiding them from search results by default?

Regards,
Lukas

[1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/23010