I recently stumbled upon the following situation: There was an update for an AUR package which couldn’t be installed because a dependency was missing. It turned out that the required dependency was originally an AUR package and has been moved from AUR to Arch extra/. Therefore it isn’t available from AUR any more, and on the other hand, since Manjaro’s testing process takes some weeks, there is a period of time where it isn’t available from Manjaro repos either, so there is no install candidate at all.
I understand that the AUR isn’t officially supported. It isn’t officially supported in Arch either, but in Arch moving a package from AUR to extra/ has no such impact, because the AUR package isn’t removed from the AUR before the package passed from Arch testing to Arch stable. In Manjaro there is a period of time where the package isn’t available at all, so it would be great if this problem could be avoided somehow!
Or, instead of Manjaro fast-tracking new packages to Stable branch without proper testing, you could just switch to Unstable branch (which is the closest to Arch Linux).
Switching to Unstable branch is a simple process:
sudo pacman-mirrors --api --set-branch unstable
After you changed the branch, rebuild the mirrorlist and update your packages:
Please advise name of package and dependency so maintainers can consider adding dependency to Manjaro repository, assuming they have not already done so
@scotty65 That’s an interesting idea, thanks! Obviously, this increases risk of breakage due to other less tested packages. But if you use AUR, you should be willing to take the risk, I guess. It’s fair with respect to those not using the AUR, as they won’t get hurt by less tested fast tracked packages just to make AUR users lives easier.
However, what I am thinking is: Whoever doesn’t need such a package as dependency won’t even notice that it is there and won’t get to feel any instability. Whoever does need such a package, will only benefit from fast tracking it, because a missing package is always worse than the tiny risk that the package is broken. So eventually, everybody would benefit from fast tracking in such a case according to this logic.
@nikgnomic I don’t quite understand, I mean, the dependency is not available in Manjaro, so how can the AUR package maintainer add a dependency for it?
Nevertheless, the AUR package is viber and the dependency in question is libxml2-legacy.
@scotty65 I see, thanks for the explanation! I should have searched for the dependency and not just for viber, then I’d have found it. I recall having the same issue with some other package a few months ago, but since I don’t recall which package it was, I cannot give any constructive input. I’ll come back to this issue when it happens again, I guess, at least if it bugs me enough!
In this particular case it’s not a big issue anyway, the easiest solution is just to ignore pamac reporting a missing dependency for some weeks, as the app in question still works without updating it.
It’s fair with respect to those not using the AUR, as they won’t get hurt by less tested fast tracked packages just to make AUR users lives easier.