Talk:Arch User Repository

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Latest comment: 3 November 2023 by Lahwaacz in topic Package maintainers

contribute to existing package

what is the best way to contribute to an existing AUR package? i cloned one and tried to push but it gave me a permission error --Soloturn (talk) 16:04, 28 January 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Users are not allowed to modify something owned by another user. It's no different from cloning a Github repository and trying to push to that. The equivalent of submitting an issue would be leaving a comment with a patch file. The AUR platform in particular allows collaboration features -- you may request that a maintainer grant you push access by adding your name as a co-maintainer. If the package is broken or out of date, see Arch User Repository#Foo in the AUR is outdated; what should I do?
This is possibly something that we should make clear in a FAQ entry. -- Eschwartz (talk) 19:49, 28 January 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I was thinking about this while writing a proposal regarding "Other requests". It is possible to request a package be disowned with "Orphan"; why not add "Co-maintain" to send a request to ask for permission to assist with a package's maintenance? Of course, it would not be unnecessary to send that request to the mailing list, and there's always the AUR comments or the forums for users to contact a maintainer otherwise; but having the feature built in to the AUR would allow us to add a fourth subsection here to recommend ground rules and possibly expedite the process of adding co-maintainers when packagers are interested in doing so. quequotion (talk) 14:45, 6 February 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Rather than an FAQ, maybe add a bullet point under "Maintaining packages". Question: Who has the right to use "Manage Co-Maintainers"? quequotion (talk) 15:07, 27 May 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Closing proposal below, now implemented. Leaving discussion open: in the future, we may want to break long bulleted lists like "Rules of Submission" and "Maintaining Packages" into subsections. This would make it more convenient to link to specific points in the list, which in turn would be convenient if we still want an FAQ such as "How can I contribute to an existing package?" (which should link to adopting orphaned packages, commenting on a package, and adding co-maintainters) quequotion (talk) 09:31, 4 June 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Since the reversion, documenting how to add co-maintainers has been absorbed into the proposal for AUR submission guidelines. quequotion (talk) 12:07, 21 July 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Proposal: How can I contribute to an existing package?

Comment: No longer clear where this question would fit--splitting the content of the page between a "maintainter-oriented" page and a "user-oriented" page overlooks the fact that AUR package maintainers and AUR users may be the same people.

If the package is orphaned you may adopt it, otherwise you may post your idea in its comments or ask to be appointed as a co-maintainer.

Integrate FAQ content

Truncate FAQs' answers as much as possible, linking to an appropriate page or (proposed) section of the AUR page. Note that some content must be transferred to the AUR submission guidelines.

If you'd like to discuss the proposal as a whole, do so in this header; use comments within individual subsections to discuss them. quequotion (talk) 04:42, 11 June 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If you'd like to see how this page should look, and get a history without other changes, I've restored its full page draft. quequotion (talk) 10:14, 11 June 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There are a lot of changes to review; so I've compiled a rundown of them on the talk page of the draft. quequotion (talk) 13:45, 14 June 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Please keep drafts on a dedicated page. (Special:Diff/575147) Closing the sections below. -- Alad (talk) 13:18, 11 June 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Update on these proposals: The FAQ integration for Arch User Repository is more or less completed, however some of the FAQ on this page contain maintainer-oriented content that is better suited to subsections of AUR submission guidelines. I am aware that proposals for a page should be discussed only on that page's talk page. These proposals date back to when these two pages existed as one, and therefore concern both: several of the FAQ from this page need to be integrated into subsections of that page. To ease the review process, I compiled a breakdown of the proposed changes. quequotion (talk) 17:13, 5 January 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Split FAQ content to Arch User Repository/FAQ page.

Have a look at the ratio of FAQ to page content.

I like the the idea of using Article/FAQ for these. quequotion (talk) 01:42, 18 June 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This makes sense to me. Jasonwryan (talk) 02:16, 18 June 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
An alternative which doesn't require a new page is merging this to FAQ. An issue with this approach (presented on IRC) however is that adding AUR content to the "official" FAQ may add some notion of supported-ness for the AUR (and its content in specific). A way around this would be to include the "AUR packages are user produced content. Any use of the provided files is at your own risk." warning as well. -- Alad (talk) 07:54, 24 June 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This would also add a significant amount of content to the official FAQ page, which might be seen as clutter. However, to be honest I'm more interested in having this FAQ relocated than where it ultimately goes. Also, not sure if I need to clarify, but this is not exclusive of the #Integrate FAQ content proposals; it would be in the best interest of wherever the FAQ ends up that it is as small as possible when it gets there. quequotion (talk) 13:10, 21 July 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Meaning of the Popularity score?

Can someone explain what the meaning of the Popularity score is, and how it's calculated? And maybe add that to the wiki? It doesn't seem to be derived from the number of votes, as some packages with more votes has a lower popularity than others with a lower vote count. Maybe it's number of installs? Maybe it's time dependent, so recent votes only temporarily increase popularity?

I got curious about this as a helper like yay prominently displays this value, but I haven't seen it presented in yay's documentation, or here. Or maybe I skimmed them too fast.

Biowaste (talk) 00:02, 2 November 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is one of many issues my proposal (Integrate FAQ content) for this page and the AUR submission guidelines page handles. If you dig around on the current page, you may find what you are looking for--or if someone could approve the changes we could have the information appropriately documented under an improved feedback section here, and referenced in a section about promoting packages to community on the AUR submission guidelines page. quequotion (talk) 04:23, 2 November 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Your proposal does not answer the question "What is the meaning of the Popularity score?" at all, so please stop pretending that it is a universal solution for every issue related to AUR documentation.
On the AUR package list page, the Popularity column is suffixed with a "?" symbol which has an HTML tooltip explaining how the values are calculated.
-- Lahwaacz (talk) 10:18, 2 November 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I see. I mistook that this was about votes. Popularity score is a different thing. My mistake. quequotion (talk) 15:22, 2 November 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Improve Comment syntax section

It would be best to give examples of comments syntax right there. Currently there are 6 links in that small section, which would take a lot of time from users and may also be misleading.

"Note this implementation has some occasional differences " - would be used much less often than how to just simply markup some code. I suggest main information should go first, and examples would be good.

It would be good if comment syntax was given directly on AUR site, but at least here one should be able to very easily navigate to basic comment syntax. Ynikitenko (talk) 15:52, 17 November 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

In particular those differences should be documented, such as aur-specific features. For example, it is noted that references to git commit hashes will be linkified, but not that this means specifically 12-digit hash references (example). No idea what the specific format expected for Flyspray tickets would be. quequotion (talk) 06:52, 19 November 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Add context about package ecosystem

I recently had the content below reverted.

The justification was: "this is irrelevant to the technical description of the AUR"

I see nothing in Help:Style, nor do I believe it would be advisable to add, anything limiting the content of articles to being strictly technical. People go to pages in the Arch wiki wanting to learn about that topic, as it relates to Arch. They want technical content and context. What I've included is an extremely important detail for someone evaluating the merits of the Arch package system! Note that I just went around the last couple of hours evaluating other Linux distros for the wiki and thoroughly appreciate when projects are smart about including these sorts of details. That's specifically why I thought to include this now. Einr (talk) 07:01, 5 September 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is not an ad board. This page describes what the AUR is and how to use it, your sentence does not help with any of these. Furthermore, your note is misleading because it indicates a combination with official repositories, which are managed independently and contain incomparably higher quality packages. The repository statistics don't consider package quality at all, in fact AUR is one of the few (if not the only one) community-driven and unsupported repositories in the top 10. — Lahwaacz (talk) 07:39, 5 September 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Regarding, "May mislead to believe combination with official." Happy to rephrase it to make it explicit in the statement that's not the case if that suits you. Einr (talk) 08:07, 5 September 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Regarding, "Not an ad board." The open source world is built on open sharing. What I posted advertises nothing and highlights only that Arch, collectively, has a broader package coverage net than nearly anything else out there almost no matter how it's measured. People looking for a package know what they want and only want to know that it's available. Einr (talk) 08:07, 5 September 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Regarding, "Contrast to incomparably higher quality packages" The contrast in quality and implied security between official and AUR seems pretty obvious and well stated already. Also happy to make that more explicit in the statement if you believe it needs further re-iterating. I think it's covered well enough in these pages, but I'm ok with that as a compromise. Einr (talk) 08:07, 5 September 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Reverted content

Combined with the official repositories, Arch is proud to be home to one of the largest and most up-to-date package repository ecosystems in the Linux world.

Tips and Tricks

Does this page really need a "Tips and Tricks" section? It seems a bit out-of-scope to me, especially the particular tip it was created for (Special:Diff/706567).

This might fit more appropriately as a Template:Tip appended to Arch User Repository#Build the package. It also needs some proofreading. quequotion (talk) 13:28, 14 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Proposal

Tip: Use git clean -dfX in the build directory to delete all untracked files, such as previously built package files.


I like the idea of moving it. Having it as a tip directly after the description of --clean makes sense. Progandy (talk) 14:43, 16 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
As the writer of this, I am not against moving it.
Still if more tips and tricks would occur, I think a section for this might be useful. But until then it could be removed.
G3ro (talk) 16:56, 16 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If more general tips and tricks related to the AUR come up, that don't fit in any existing section, there may be use for it in the future. This one fits well after the explanation of building a package. quequotion (talk) 18:56, 16 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Using extra-x86_64-build from devtools

@Scimmia,

I'm not able to confirm, or understand, your summary on reverting my addition of a note, namely, "Covered in previous paragraph." There is no mention of devtools or extra-x86_64-build anywhere in this wiki page(?). I guess I'm being thick as usual.... TIA :)

Backstory: For several years I have used my own custom bash script to test build my AUR pkgs in a clean chroot. Recently in the forums Slithery and graysky pointed me to two existing tools, the first of which is from devtools. I found that this wasn't mentioned anywhere in the AUR wiki page or DeveloperWiki Building in a clean chroot page.

Cmsigler (talk) 15:34, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As I said, it's covered by the previous paragraph. Click the link. Scimmia (talk) 15:37, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I don't think I'm wrong in saying that for AUR maintainers the DeveloperWiki Building in a clean chroot page is unrevealing as to the usefulness of extra-x86_64-build for their use case. That's what led me astray for about 3 years. There is a technically correct (the best kind) way to build in a clean chroot, but there is no mention of its usefulness for AUR pkgs.
I have posted on the corresponding Talk page asking for a short note so this is rather obvious for AUR maints. I hope that makes some sense. Thanks :) Cmsigler (talk) 16:36, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I don't see the issue here - DeveloperWiki:Building in a clean chroot mentions extra-x86_64-build in the second paragraph. -- Alad (talk) 13:11, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Alad -- Perhaps it's just me being dense then?... The table shows extra-x86_64-build as having target repositories extra/community. I had no idea it worked for AUR packages, and when reading this misunderstood that it only worked for packages that live in the repositories. It would have helped me if on the AUR wiki page it mentioned that it also works for any pkg, including those in AUR. I hope that explains a little better. Thanks again for these replies :) Cmsigler (talk) 13:37, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Add a section to compare binary packages and source packages

Hello,

When writing pages recently, I have realised we do not actually discuss the difference between -bin and source packages, and the pros and cons of each, some of them are obvious such as a binary package being faster to install, while a source install is slower etc.

Can a section be dedicated to addressing this topic within this page?

Thanks, PolarianDev (talk) 21:12, 20 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Add a note about fixing gpg DNS resolution?

In my recent install, I ended up with an /etc/resolv.conf that only had comments in it, that I didn't write. This prevented gpg --recv-key from pulling the key for an AUR package, since it couldn't find the keyserver.

I found this post in the forum, which solved my issue: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2011737#p2011737

Would it be worth adding a note to this page explaining this fix for posterity? I'm thinking something like:

If you are using systemd-resolved, gpg --recv-key may fail (in an otherwise-working system) because it doesn't have any DNS entries. To fix that, you can link the file it uses to the dynamically-generated one set up by systemd.

# rm /etc/resolv.conf
# ln -s /run/systemd/resolve/stub-resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf

Does that make sense? Loss (talk) 07:35, 17 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If you have empty /etc/resolv.conf, much more things than just gpg will be broken. If you use systemd-resolved, you need to follow the setup instructions described on that page. Furthermore, gpg has its own page: GnuPG.
You need to figure out how you "ended up with an /etc/resolv.conf that only had comments in it" – it was definitely not caused by using the AUR, so it does not belong here.
Lahwaacz (talk) 07:59, 17 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Very fair. I suspected that I just didn't RTFM enough. I didn't look at that page in particular because the service seemed to "just work" immediately when I started it, and the error message I got didn't look obviously like DNS.
I guess it could have been put there by a package I installed, but I wouldn't know how to track that down other than to reinstall the system and check when it appears... and that seems like a very low reward:effort ratio.
Thank you for the insight, though. Loss (talk) 08:18, 17 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Package maintainers

Two things that probably need to be fixed:

(I'm not sure how to fix this, so I just leave this note here) andreymal (talk) 13:13, 31 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

All fixed, thanks. — Lahwaacz (talk) 22:06, 3 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]