[Dev] Repo situation Was: Re: Votation to put [games] repo on our distro

Luke T.Shumaker lukeshu at sbcglobal.net
Thu May 3 03:48:18 GMT 2012


I thought this visualization may help (excluding testing repos):

   quality: |==========High=========| |===Good==| |Anything-goes|
      Arch: [core] [extra] [multilib] [community] <AUR>
  Parabola: [====libre===]            [~*]

Special purpose:
  [cross] [artistic] [elementary] [gnu] [kernels] [social]
I don't know:
  [gis] [radio]

At Wed, 02 May 2012 22:08:32 +0200,
Michał Masłowski wrote:
> > So far we agreed to have repos per [project] and [~user], though some
> > propposed to have [parabola-community] or whatever. Do you think
> > this should be changed? Explain your position, of course.
> 
> How having different repos is beneficial (for users or packagers)?
> 
> I know two arguments for Arch having multiple repos: they have different
> quality policies, and some are for testing packages before putting them
> in stable repos.  We don't do these things (although they would be
> beneficial in some cases), so these arguments don't apply here (and
> certainly not for completely new packages not replacing other packages).

Right now I view the different repos as having different quality
policies/sources. The user repos are like the AUR in that anything
goes (as long as it is free). However, some of us may actually have
strict standards on the quality, so there is a usefulness in keeping
them in separate user repos lets users say "I trust packages from
[~fauno], but not [~lukeshu], the latter has all unstable beta crap
and half-working installs." (only kinda true :) )

[libre] is for high-quality "important" packages that provide free
solutions to problems in Arch's [core] and [extra]. 

As for the "special purpose" repos, I think a few have a place, but
most don't. I think that [cross] definately has a place, similar to
[multilib]. I'm not sure about [kernels].

I do think we should have a [parabola-community] (or similar) that
would take over [elementary], [gnu], [social], and others. It would be
where packages from user repositories could graduate to if they are
well maintained and good-quality.

~ Luke Shumaker

> As a user, I have to list more repos in /etc/pacman.conf or not find
> some packages.  I don't know a mapping from problems solved by packages
> to repos.  Maybe databases fetched are smaller due to not including some
> packages there, it's not a problem since fetching them normally is
> faster than e.g. downloading packages to install.
> 
> 
> Changing it to have a single repo for all packages not taken directly
> From Arch would make it obvious which repo to choose and would be
> simpler.
> 
> Debian and Trisquel practically have one repo, I never noticed problems
> with this solution.



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