I have used the Foxit pdf reader for a loooooong time on Windoze and Linux. On my Manjaro test virtual machine I just ran pamac foxitreader. It pulled the package from AUR and installed it with a BUNCH of dependencies including gstreamer0 which I found curious. The program works and is the current version.
I restored the VM image from backup and installed Foxit from the vendor’s .run file. It also runs and is the correct version. I then ran pamac foxitreader. It AGAIN wants to install gstreamer0 which does not really seem to be a dependency. I see gstreamer0 listed in the PKGBUILD file.
Is it appropriate to question the AUR maintainer about this? gstreamer0 does not seem to do any harm.
If you were to look into the .run file, you would find, that gstreamer is, in fact, a dependency (or at least it’s also present in the .run file), so the AUR package is correct.
Besides that … its generally true that on all linux (or distros with package managers anyways) you want to prefer something that is recognized by the package manager and integrated with the system.
If you find an issue with an AUR package (such as an unneeded or missing dependency) then, yes, it would probably be a good idea to contact the maintainer.
(in this case you could check by augmenting the PKGBUILD or force remove gstreamer0.10-base without dependency checks … see if it works)
Thanks pobm. By the preponderance of votes that would seem to be correct
Thanks cscs, That is a valid point. I “discovered” repositories in Ubuntu 6.x or 7.x. Prior to that (and having only a dialup Internet connection prior to that) playing with Red Hat 5.8 - 0 and Fedora Core up to about 4 I would search for a package if I needed one. “Updates” meant purchasing a CD of the next version.
That said, the only programs which I am using (on my main CentOS workstation) which are not in repos are VMWare Workstation and Foxit Reader. VMWare has its own built in update process. And Foxit - I will have to admit that it had gotten a bit out of date. My Manjaro experimentation caused me to check the version and I then manually updated the CentOS installation.
Ken
p.s. I never received an email notification of the replies to my original post. I am shown as “Watching.” Is there something I need to configure on my account? I am new to this forum…
