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general question on use of AUR

Having dropped the Arch repositories from my  pacman.conf, there are some packages no longer available to me, such as kmymoney. There is still a kmymoney-git in AUR, but it has several dependencies which are not in AUR, and only in one of the Arch repositories.  I might be willing to support them in AUR, but I can't imagine putting a package in AUR which exists in one of the Arch repositories.  Would it make any sense to create an aur.artixlinux.org for such packages before they might be considered for addition to one of the official Artix repositories?

Re: general question on use of AUR

Reply #1 –
Probably not.

By using the Arch Repos at the very end in the pacman.conf, there is no disadvantage for the user at all, except for the "ideological idea" to do without it completely.

In addition, it also has many advantages and simplifications for the developers. The developers do not have to maintain the "universal packages", i.e. the packages that do not directly depend on systemd and co, but trust that the packages that work for arch will also work for artix in 99% of cases.

Surely the Artix development team has the goal to offer every package that Arch offers, but you have to keep in mind that Artix, without knowing the exact numbers, probably has only 1-5% of developers and supporters than Arch itself (compared probably even less, considering developers working indirectly on Arch like now Valve because of SteamOS/Steamdeck).

So something like offering an AUR only for Artix is a huge task for which ultimately the manpower is simply missing.

So, finally just be patient until package xyz moves from Arch repos to Artix repos (and find a maintainer in the Artix development team) or educate yourself and support the Artix development team or just support Artix by donating money for servers & co.

j2c :-)

Re: general question on use of AUR

Reply #2 –
I thought the main idea of  AUR was that packages were submitted by and maintained by volunteers, not by the core developers (whether Arch or Artix) so it shouldn't detract from the core Artix manpower.  That's partly why the quality isn't assured.  I had also thought it was a way for a potential new developer to show they can maintain a package prior to applying to be an official developer. 

Anyway - given your explanation, I'll probably add the Arch repos back to the end of my   list.

Re: general question on use of AUR

Reply #3 –
My thought is if I can get all my missing packages from trustworthy packages the AUR, then that's what I'll do. If the AUR can't fill in all the gaps, might as well bring in Arch repos.

That being said, kmymoney is now in the Artix repos :)

Re: general question on use of AUR

Reply #4 –
Well that's fortuitous timing.  It wasn't there right now for me until I did another refresh of the repos.  And, not to be a pain, but who do I tell kmymoney has a new version out 5.1.3, just a few days ago?

Also - how do you judge that any particular AUR package is trustworthy?

Re: general question on use of AUR

Reply #5 –
Quote
I thought the main idea of  AUR was that packages were submitted by and maintained by volunteers, not by the core developers (whether Arch or Artix) so it shouldn't detract from the core Artix manpower.

Think your self: Someone need to program/set up a repo/site like AUR. Someone need to maintain it. Someone need to maintain and control the submitted "packages" (PKGBUILD). Someone need to delete orphaned PKGBUILD. Someone need to write a API/"patch" for the millions AUR helpers like pacur or yay (or submitt a "patch" to them). Etc pp.

Thats need A LOT of manpower and time.

And than comes the usability of that: What do you think how many User of Artix knows and want to submit a PKGBUILD to that type of AUR? How many of them is ready to maintain and fix them for YEARS (it tooks mostly years until a useful package from AUR goes in the official repo (and only if somebody trustworthy is found to maintain it for the official arch repos)).

So, that is in the first place a great idea. But sadly not worth it (until now).

Re: general question on use of AUR

Reply #6 –
Quote from: gentermnl – on
who do I tell kmymoney has a new version out 5.1.3, just a few days ago?

The Arch package page would be the place to do that. Though kmymoney has already been flagged as out-of-date. It probably won't get updated until the monthly KDE version bump happens, my guess is this week.

Quote from: gentermnl – on
Also - how do you judge that any particular AUR package is trustworthy?

Verify the PKGBUILD.

Take a cursory look at the PKGBULD (the less popular the AUR package, the more scrutiny necessary). Do the contents make sense? If it's a *-git package, is it cloning from the official git repository? If it's a *-bin package, is the binary coming from the official website or from a release in the git repo? Checking the sources of a PKGBULD can go a long way.

Re: general question on use of AUR

Reply #7 –
It would be possible to set up a mini Artix AUR, backed with free online services for the various hosting requirements so long as it didn't get too big, which would be unlikely anyway, using the open source code for the Arch AUR and patching it so it said Artix not Arch where appropriate. I don't think it would be hugely difficult or time consuming for anyone who is familiar with creating websites, but it would clearly need a very enthusiastic person to do all that on a long term basis.
Aur website code:
https://github.com/archlinux/aurweb
Having done this then AUR helpers would need to patched to detect if Artix was the OS used and find the new address and give the correct priority to the packages, because otherwise they won't know it exists.
But say you wanted to build kmymoney-git and needed archdep1 and archdep2 to build it, then probably you would find archdep1-git and archdep2-git in the AUR which will provide archdep1 and archdep2, and if there wasn't it would be easier to add a PKGBUILD for the new -git packages to the AUR than create a new Artix AUR, ie there is probably an easier workaround for the problem than creating a whole new site.
But it could be done with less effort than one might imagine though. It's almost surprising no Arch based distro seems to have tried this, but then again perhaps it shows they haven't needed to.

Re: general question on use of AUR

Reply #8 –
I am not really in favor setting up an AUR for artix, it would mean lots of overhead  with arch AUR and lots of unnecessary work to be done.