Hello, So I was editing the ArchWiki today and I found the following: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unofficial_user_repositories#Packages_searchIt seems we are recommending the use of pkgs.org which has indexed a few of the unofficial repositories along with the official.
It is however flagged for factual accuracy (although I have not validated the flag, therefore it might have been fixed by pkgs.org), and we are relying on a third party tool.
I was not too sure where to send this email, because sending it to aur-general would imply it is aur exclusive which it is not, therefore I choose arch-general as a more well rounded generally discussion.
I have a single question, and I am fully aware this will not be "officially supported", however due to the disorganisation of this page, and also the flag on the current package search, is a global package search for all official and unofficial repositories something desired by the arch community?
Follow up question is has the former already been attempted but failed? I have a few reasons below on why I feel it would be useful:- Currently on ArchWiki pages we attempt to list unofficial repositories which include AUR package builds for easier installation, but now with the size of the unofficial repository list, and the chance that the packages may overlap one another (ie: two or more repositories could build the same package from the AUR) it would be useful to have a tool, or database which we can link to, or we just ignore unofficial repositories completely. Currently, and I am one of the people guilty of this, only ArchWiki editors document their repositories on pages, having a tool to do it for us would be useful I feel.
- There is a lot of unofficial repositories, there is no way to go through each one manually and find the package you are looking for, so no offense to all those who have put their time into unofficial repositories, but... majority of the time its "AUR builds" or with chaotic AUR everything they want to build within the AUR, with their own personal biases.
I have seen projects such as bioarchlinux use the source code of the arch package search to create their own repository index, I assume this is due to the shear size of the repository.
The concept would be simple:- Mirror (of official) and unofficial (repository or mirror of said repository) opt-in to being indexed.
- Each database is downloaded, and the packages within it indexed against the repository name, similar to how pkgs.org does it, we should flag it as official or unofficial.
- API access should be free to the entire of the arch, and the wider arch community using arch-based distributions, without any cost, and also without profit.
- All source code should be open source, but saying this is a little obvious within the arch community, seen as 9/10 people stand very strongly against proprietary software.
Now the reasons against it:- Centralised and unofficial, trusting centralised authority is already difficult enough, the entire reason we (hopefully) trust the arch staff is due to the representation of different viewpoints, and the voting system. This idea being unofficial and ungoverned means its subject to abuse, which is a good reason why I think nobody has suggested this, and if they have I am sure the arch staff would be uneasy about it, however on the other hand, its just indexing of publicly available information, so its not really a sensitive project.
- Could be subject to abuse, just like how arch staff do not validate that unofficial repositories are not distributing anything malicious (hence the "use at your own risk" and numerous other warnings throughout the wiki about it), indexing said databases makes the project potentially liable for said problems.
- I am not even sure it will work well... concepts always seem amazing when you think about it, but in practise they tend to be a whole lot worse, but it would be massively helpful for fixing and maintaining the "Installation" sections of numerous software pages on the ArchWiki.
The reason I am not just going off and doing it myself, and emailing here is I have the following questions:
For everyone: - Is this a terrible idea? - Who would develop and maintain the source code?- Who would be responsible to hosting it, its unofficial thus someone has to?
- Would you feel comfortable using a tool which is not officially supported? For arch staff (which I hope will critisise the idea massively): - Would this breach any rules?- Would you be happy with official packages being indexed alongside their unofficial counterparts?
- Would this cause conflict within the community, or with staff members?I would like to highlight this was an idea to improve what pkgs.org has already done in the way of archlinux indexing, and secondly, draw it into the arch community to follow the ideals and rules, for example pkgs.org profits off their API use, while arch believes in non-profit etc etc.
I am in two minds about whether I should suggest this or should forget about it, it could go really well where users would be interested in it, or it could go badly and I might start an argument, which would be a breach of CoC on my part. I ask that people be critical of the idea, but please bare in mind this was an idea, and I am not actively trying to cause problems, it seems stupid me highlighting this but due to previous posts over the past 1-2 months which have had heavy amounts of hate towards them, I must highlight this is meant as a harmless suggestion of an idea to help ArchWiki and the general community use the unofficial repositories.
If there is already a project (or many projects) which are developing something like this, please let me know, as far as I am aware I can not see any wide effort, although i am aware one or two repositories have their own indexing efforts.
Anyways please let me know your opinions on this, and I hope that this doesn't turn sour like the last mailing list thread I started.
Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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