Hi, regarding what you said, this is being discussed for all packages that are not open source [1]. While this rule is being discussed, you could apply what is already defined [2].
In my personal opinion, using "-bin" provides more transparency for the user, even if the source code is not available. Regards. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Talk:Nonfree_applications_package_guidelines#Strict_rule_when_to_use_-bin_suffix [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Nonfree_applications_package_guidelines El lun, 10 de nov de 2025, 10:23 p.m., Christopher Cooper < [email protected]> escribió: > Hi all, > > I maintain the claude-code package [1] on AUR along with ticpu. > > Claude Code is not an open source project. For most of the project's > lifespan, it has been distributed only as an npm package [2], which > contains only minified javascript. Recently, a "binary" version was > released which appears to use the same code as released on npm, but > bundled into a standalone executable using `bun build --compile` [3]. > The official docs [4] now seem to prefer installing the standalone > binary, though the option to install through npm is still available. > > I recently switched the package to use the distributed bun binary, > rather than the minified npm package, since this seems to now be the > installation method preferred by upstream. However, this raises an > interesting question - should the package now be called "claude-code- > bin" instead of "claude-code"? > > The logic here is that the "-bin" suffix should be used if a source- > based package is available. In this case, the npm package would be > such a "source-based" package. I personally find this argument > uncompelling, as minified code doesn't really seem comparable to > actual source code. The npm package and the distributed binary have > essentially the same visibility into the underlying code that is being > run - you could use `strings` or other methods to extract the minified > code from the binary version. > > There's a second argument which is more compelling to me, that some > users may prefer the npm-based installation, so it would be useful to > have two different AUR packages. In this case, the new binary-based > package could be called "claude-code-bin", and the previous npm-based > package could be just "claude-code". (Of course, other naming schemes > could be used, e.g. "claude-code" and "claude-code-npm".) Personally, I > don't see great value in having two separate packages and the > opportunity for user disruption seems high, but I'd love to hear > people's opinions on this. > > This boils down to two questions: > 1. Is it _against the package naming rules_ to call this package "claude- > code" rather than "claude-code-bin"? > 2. Do people think that this package _should_ be split into separate > packages for the two installation methods, and if so, what should the > packages be called? > > Thanks for your consideration, > Christopher > > [1]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/claude-code > [2]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@anthropic-ai/claude-code > [3]: https://bun.com/docs/bundler/executables > [4]: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview >
