Call for arms: Arch Linux D package maintenance

[bachmeier via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Wednesday, 1 February 2017 at 12:47:51 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> As I have previously announced 
> (http://forum.dlang.org/post/o6fbbu$1qli$1@digitalmars.com), I 
> am stepping down from maintaining Arch Linux packages for D.
>
> That means there are 3 possibilities:
>
> - No one will adopt them and all packages will be moved to AUR
> - Some existing Trusted User decided to adopt them
> - Someone from D community decides to become Trusted User and 
> adopts them
>
> First option is definitely the worst one and I don't see any 
> enthusiasm regarding second option from existing TUs. Is there 
> anyone willing to volunteer for the option three?
>
> I promise all the guidance and help in submitting TU 
> application and figuring out maintenance process but there does 
> need to be a volunteer ;)

It's been quite a while since Arch was my main desktop, so things 
might have changed, in which case please ignore this comment.

The worst outcome is option 3 with someone that is not dedicated 
to the task. One of the reasons I started using Arch was because 
it was continuously updated, allowing me to get the latest 
versions of several packages right after a new release. What I 
found instead was that the TU in charge of the packages wouldn't 
provide updates. Making matters worse, because there was an 
official package, they wouldn't allow it in AUR. Making matters 
worse still, when someone would inquire on the forums there were 
TUs writing lengthy responses telling them to stop whining and 
write their own pkgbuild and anyway how hard is it to compile 
software.

Eventually I gave up because not only was I stuck compiling my 
own software, I was also responsible for making necessary changes 
to pkgbuild files (and that wasn't always just bumping a version 
number).

Hopefully anyone that does step up will think carefully first 
about whether they are willing to make a sufficient time 
commitment. Otherwise we'll lose most Arch users, and that's a 
popular distro.