[tur-users] Unstable (AKA -{svn, cvs, devel}) packages in [community] ?

[Phil Dillon-Thiselton]

On 14/04/07, Roman Kyrylych <roman.kyrylych at gmail.com> wrote:
> There was short discussion about their future and then wizzomafizzo
> agreed to maintain them in community.

I must have missed that.  Based on what the XFCE devs have said
themselves the SVN pkgs will be next to useless for sometime.  They
served their purpose until the 4.4 release, I don't see the point of
keeping them around.

As far as compiz etc - as the projects are now remerging that's all
gonna have to be rethought out anyway.  I am assuming brain0 will move
compiz to unstable now once beryl is deprecated.  Therefore discussion
of their SCM versions is a bit empty at this time.

I'm generally against putting pkgs like this in [community] though.
They should be easy enough to build from the PKGBUILDs for the people
that really want them.  I think these pkgs epitomize what the AUR is
all about.

I'm also not convinced that there is enough demand.  The votes posted
above really are not that high.  There are 4000 AUR users and 28 have
voted for the most popular pkg.  That's hardly a deluge!  I know
that's a bit of an unfair way to put it, less than 1% ;)

I think the reason why pkgs like gaim-svn (shortly to become
pidgin-monotone or whatever) and xfce-svn were so popular was because
they _had_ such slow release cycles.  XFCE has finally been released
and we now understand the delays with gaim.  I'll stop using the SCM
versions of these pkgs the second they make their big releases and I
bet there is a big majority that would do the same.

Those two are major applications in the linux world and it was
annoying to miss out on the great features for so long - I can't
believe that nitrogen has such an exciting future that SCM versions
provide essential features!

SCM pkgs in many cases are the ultimate expression of fanboy-ism.  I
used to run and maintain fvwm-cvs and fluxbox-svn before that.  And
the thing about fanboyism is that it's often not about better
performance or improvements, it's about being able to say that you run
it.  LIkewise uploading SCM version pkgs to the AUR is a bit of a
badge of honour.

Having said all that i think opera-devel might actually be a fair
candidate for [community].

Here ends the rambling thoughts of a sleep deprived man on a Sunday AM.