On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Xavier <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 8:14 PM, Ray Kohler <[email protected]> wrote: >> I'm the maintainer of the "surf" package in AUR, and I've discovered >> an annoyance in the way I've created this package. I'd like some >> advice on how to resolve it. >> >> This package is a web browser from suckless.org, the makers of dwm. It >> has very much the same coding and build style, involving a config.h >> file which the user is intended to customize. Most of surf's behavior >> is decided at compile-time by this file. I've modeled my package after >> the "dwm" package in community, copying the default config.h into the >> root of the package tarball and listing it as a local source file. >> build() then copies it into the unpacked source directory before >> compiling. >> >> This is great for users of dwm who rebuild it from ABS, as it avoids >> the need to modify build() in order to customize the package - the >> user just needs to supply their own config.h and change the md5sum for >> it. >> >> This doesn't work so well for my surf package, though, since that's in >> the AUR. Many (most?) users of AUR packages are auto-updating with >> helper-tools like yaourt, pbget, and similar utilities, and it's >> difficult to automatically pull updates to package materials when >> you've changed one of the files. customizepkg won't help you much >> either, since that can only modify the PKGBUILD, and not the config.h. >> >> It's also annoying to me as the maintainer of the package. Anyone who >> maintains a package that's meant to have the build customized, rather >> than compiled as-is, will end up actually maintaining two copies - one >> "stock" version to submit to AUR, and one customized version for >> personal use. >> >> Obviously, none of these issues are show-stoppers. But they are >> annoying, and I don't packages I maintain to annoy my end-users. What >> can I do to make this package more comfortable for the average AUR >> user? Is software that expects compile-time customization just >> fundamentally not very compatible with the auto-update concept? >> > > dwm was one of the very few softwares I never used a PKGBUILD for and > don't recommend using one. > And the problem you just described is one of the reasons.
Back on topic, I think I'll wait and see if anybody else has any surprising suggestions that disagree with this one, and if none are forthcoming, I'll disown the surf package. Having a pacman developer tell me not to use pacman for a given purpose is rather convincing, in which case, I should let someone who _isn't_ convinced take on the package and worry about the problem, instead of me. ;)
