The article mentions the potential need for human review. I have no idea how that could be feasible for something as massive as the AUR. Maybe it could work like Nix, where every package goes through a PR/MR process, and then after it gets approved, the submitter is added to the list of contributors. It’s definitely not a perfect process, but it’s better than the zero-review process that the AUR has.
I’ve noticed some installers have at least a voting system (e.g. Octopi) which helps… slightly. At least in knowing what the right package name probably is. Crowd source reviewing is probably the only option for such a vast and open system, even if it can be gamed sometimes.
imo, there should be automatic tags like “active”, “abandoned”, “maintainer changed recently”, “updated after hiatus” and a few more.
The arch devs and community can decide on the time frames. It’s not going to be perfect, but it may help warn users of the changes and so they can do a double take.
Anything other than the “active” ones should show what changed (paru already does this) and users should make a conscious choice to install it anyway. (y/N) instead of going through the installation spamming the return key.
The article mentions the potential need for human review. I have no idea how that could be feasible for something as massive as the AUR. Maybe it could work like Nix, where every package goes through a PR/MR process, and then after it gets approved, the submitter is added to the list of contributors. It’s definitely not a perfect process, but it’s better than the zero-review process that the AUR has.
I’ve noticed some installers have at least a voting system (e.g. Octopi) which helps… slightly. At least in knowing what the right package name probably is. Crowd source reviewing is probably the only option for such a vast and open system, even if it can be gamed sometimes.
imo, there should be automatic tags like “active”, “abandoned”, “maintainer changed recently”, “updated after hiatus” and a few more.
The arch devs and community can decide on the time frames. It’s not going to be perfect, but it may help warn users of the changes and so they can do a double take.
Anything other than the “active” ones should show what changed (paru already does this) and users should make a conscious choice to install it anyway. (y/N) instead of going through the installation spamming the return key.
There’s a reason why we already called it orphaned. The flag already exists. The AUR helper that auto updates stuff is the problem
AUR does have a voting system, albeit a basic one.