Archlinux Packaging Out of Date

[kousu]

This note

sudo pacman -S jsonlab

doesn't work:

$ sudo pacman -Sy jsonlab
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
error: target not found: jsonlab

It got moved to the AUR I guess: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/jsonlab

so you need to pikaur -S jsonlab or yaourt -S jsonlab.

[fangq]

@kousu, I am making a new release of jsonlab (v2.0). Do know how to submit a new package for Arch? I am happy to create a compatible package or contact the maintainer for help.

[kousu]

@fangq that's great to hear. In order to get packages into Arch they first need to go through the AUR; if they are popular enough they will be adopted into Arch officially, but it's not unusual for packages to live happily in the AUR and get lots of use for years.

Since jsonlab is already in the AUR, I think once you make an official release here on Github you could click "Flag package out of date" on https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/jsonlab; then billiepilgrim should get notified and be able to update it to use your latest version. You could also make your own AUR package -- based on https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=jsonlab -- and submit it under a different name. To do that, boot into Arch, take that PKGBUILD file, run makepkg, and then edit it and keep running makepkg until you have a version that uses your v2.0.

Was jsonlab really included in Arch before? Did it get demoted from the core distribution to the AUR?

In either case, in this repo, I think you need to update your install instructions to say

Install jsonlab from the AUR

or

Install jsonlab from the AUR with

pikaur -Sy jsonlab

(which uses the nice pikaur pacman+AUR wrapper, but requires the user to have installed it manually first from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pikaur/)

[kousu]

Another thing you could do is make a jsonlab-git AUR package: one that is always built from your latest master branch. The trick is just to set source=("git+https://https://github.com/fangq/jsonlab.git"); for example, here's how abiword-git works: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=abiword-git

[fangq]

@kousu, I just released jsonlab 2.0, and flagged the arch package "out-of-date".
hopefully someone will help update the package. unfortunately I don't have any packaging experience with aur.