On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 6:44 AM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This is the best reasoning I've heard here. The fact of the matter is,> On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 06:51:20PM +0100, Andreas Radke wrote:
>> the community repo is still a mess. it seems the TUs just put in what
>> they like not what is requested by the community. there are still
>> many packages with more than 50 votes waiting in unsupported AUR. Maybe
>> a monthly pkg move in/out should be installed by the TUs.
>
> TUs really shouldn't be adding packages if they don't use them. At the
> same time they shouldn't be adding packages solely because they use
> them. That seems to be happening an extraordinary amount. It's somewhat
> of an abuse of the server's resources.
the community repo and the AUR still run on Arch's main servers. This
uses our disk space and our resources and can have direct impact on a
lot of things. Case in point: Dan just discovered a load issue on
gerolde was largely due to a script that chmod/chown-ed the
unsupported directory. As you can see, community and the AUR can have
direct impact on the developers, and users.
Using the community repo as your own personal playground for packages
only you and two other guys use, is a tad selfish and impacts all of
us. Even if the AUR voting isn't the best way to move packages to
community, it's all we have right now. Propose something better if you
don't like it. But in all seriousness, throwing binaries up there
"just because" can (and does) cause problems for all of us.
Running a pacman repo is trivially easy. Build packages, run repo-add,
put it in a dir visible to a webserver. If there are packages that
only you use, or maybe you and your friends, or maybe you're just
experimenting with it, why not run your own repo until it gains
popularity and you're SURE it deserves to be in community.
Um,,, one important comment;
The TU system was a DIRECT outgrowth of the earlier efforts to find a place for users with significant output to be hosted BY the archlinux systems. It was an offer to these (later called) trusted users. It was NEVER a demand from folks outside of the devs, but originated FROM the devs as an offer. In fact the very first system *was* just some user-based repos Aaron, offered up by one of the devs on his personal system and later, with Judd's approval moved onto archlinux servers !! It was felt at that time that is was a good thing to consolidate various repos and the eventual community repo was the result.
Again, at NO time was a demand for this EVER made. The space on the archlinux servers was a **gift** from the devs. I was surprised by this gift at the time, more especially since I was the very first one to be offered this gift, but I came to realize that it was an important thing to have done as it has created both large growth spurts since then AND significant "community" participation.
Bottom line:
- If the systems are being overloaded, and the devs feel it is too much of strain to host these packages, they of course have a right to recind the offer to host private repos.
- It is my hope that the devs. seek other ways to avoid this kind of oversight into something that has worked wonderfully as a resource, more especially since it is structured to NOT seek to restrict a TU's actions past his/her ability to not create security problems.
Best regards;
Bob Finch
