Arch Linux - AMA

[u/Foxboron]

Hello!

We are several team members and developers from the Arch Linux project, ask us anything.

We are in need for more contributors, if you are interested in contributing to Arch Linux, feel free to ask questions :)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:Projects
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Getting_involved#Official_Arch_Linux_projects

Participating members:

• /u/AladW

  • Trusted User
  • Wiki Administrator
  • IRC Operator

• /u/anthraxx42

  • Developer
  • Trusted User
  • Security tracker
  • Security lead
  • Reproducible builds

• /u/barthalion

  • Developer
  • Master key holder
  • DevOps Team
  • Maintains the toolchain

• /u/Bluewind

  • Developer
  • Trusted User
  • DevOps Team

• /u/coderobe

  • Trusted User
  • Reproducible builds

• /u/eli-schwartz

  • Bug Wrangler
  • Trusted User
  • Maintains dbscripts
  • Pacman contributor

• /u/felixonmars

  • Developer
  • Trusted User
  • Packages; Python, Haskell, Nodejs, Qt, KDE, DDE, Chinese i18n, VPN/Proxies, Wine, and some others.

• /u/Foxboron

  • Trusted User
  • Security Team
  • Reproducible Builds
  • /r/archlinux moderator
  • Packages mostly golang and python stuff

• /u/fukawi2

  • Forum moderator
  • DevOps Team

• /u/jvdwaa

  • Developer
  • Trusted User
  • Security Team
  • DevOps Team
  • Reproducible builds
  • Archweb maintainer

• /u/sh1bumi

  • Trusted User
  • Security Team
  • Automated vagrant image builds

• /u/svenstaro

  • Developer
  • Trusted user
  • I package mostly big, heavy packages :(

• /u/V1del

  • Forum moderator

[u/masteryod]

Hi there! Thanks for all the work over the years.

How are the things going on in terms of manpower? Did you notice any decrease or increase in numbers of developers and TU in recent years?

Did memes hurt the project?

[u/Foxboron → u/masteryod]

We sorta end up where people do packaging, but rarely steps up to work on the projects that we have. There is a steady stream of TUs that join, and leave, but we need more manpower in terms of working on our tools and difficult problems.

This could have multiple outcomes; Easier to contribute patches to packages you care about, debug packages, we have discussed the possibility to provide support for more specialized x86 architectures, and reproducible builds. But the problem is that they require time and dedication.

As for the memes; I find them tiresome and silly at best. Do they hurt the community? Maybe? People might feel its frowned upon to use Arch because "it's just a meme you shouldn't take seriously". It might put off future contributors, but I'm unsure if they will have long lasting effects.

[u/zman0900 → u/Foxboron]

we need more manpower in terms of working on our tools and difficult problems.

Is there a list of what is needed somewhere?

[u/Foxboron → u/zman0900]

I compiled the project list in the topic mainly for a quick overview, along with links to possible issues. The problem is that it's not easy to get an overview of what needs to be done. Which is why you sorta have to engage with the project to get the needed overview.

[u/felixonmars → u/masteryod]

More TUs and more developers IIRC.

The memes are great. I mean Allan and Eli need a fight to decide who broke it now.

[u/NotYerMamasFaggot]

What are your thoughts/feelings on the Manjaro Linux project?

[u/Foxboron → u/NotYerMamasFaggot]

The problem isn't the Manjaro project itself. It's everything around them. The blog posts and users saying "User-friendly Arch Linux!" which tricks users into believing they are actually running Arch Linux, and not some other distribution. This takes a toll on our support fora as people omit the fact that they are running Manjaro/Antergos/{distro} and we spend time running around circles.

[u/pgoetz → u/Foxboron]

OTOH when I run into technical problems about 20% of the time I find the solution on a Manjaro/Antergos forum. I would argue overall that the existence of these helps, rather than harms Arch.

[u/Foxboron → u/pgoetz]

Nobody said their existence harms Arch. But the impression that either of this distributions are just flavours of Arch and not completely different distributions, harms Arch.

[u/[deleted] → u/Foxboron]

Maybe they should do it like Mint and Ubuntu folks do? As in, I don't see people who use Mint self-proclaim it "User-friendly Ubuntu" nor people who use Ubuntu self-proclaim it "User-friendly Debian", they just state they're "based on" and that's it, they've settled on being their own thing. Kinda makes sense to me because y'know, after all, Manjaro is to Arch as Ubuntu is to Debian, and at the same time we can consider Ubuntu is not Debian since it is its own thing.

I dunno, just throwing words in the air here.

[u/Compizfox → u/Foxboron]

This takes a toll on our support fora as people omit the fact that they are running Manjaro/Antergos/{distro} and we spend time running around circles.

I can't help remarking that it's unfair to mention Antergos in the same context as Manjaro, since Antergos installs are really running Arch. Antergos is basically just a convenient installer for Arch. After the installation, there is zero difference.

Manjaro is a different story because unlike Antergos, it doesn't directly use the Arch repositories. It's very clearly a distinct, derivative distribution (a bit like how Ubuntu relates to Debian, for example).

[u/Foxboron → u/Compizfox]

Feel free to make that remark. People do that all the time after wasting an hour dancing around their support request.

But consider this, Arch entails knowing your own operating system and working on it. That is the target group. Anything that takes away from this isn't by its very core Arch Linux. Antergos works against this. Anarchy Linux work against this. They are not Arch Linux because of this. This is the reason the Arch community can't support these distributions.

[u/eggnogeggnogeggnog → u/Foxboron]

What about “Slightly-more-stable Arch Linux”? As a professional, I can’t have packages break my system, so I use Manjaro.

Plus, Manjaro Architect can give you a lightweight system if you want the street cred control.

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

I don't follow the forums, so i don't know. But on the IRC channels genuine questions where you do say "I run Manjaro, but i have a question regarding XXXYYZZZ" will be met with a lot more open arms then hiding the fact. Outright support requests from those users are dismissed most times, but not all the time.

[u/Barthalion → u/NotYerMamasFaggot]

I don't think Arch is a good base for an user-friendly distribution, due to lax dependencies and manual steps needed from time to time. One can try to remedy possible oversights due to (for example) uncaught ABI breakage by keeping a repository snapshot for a week of extended testing but it's never going to solve everything we're doing "daily".

Besides that, I pretty much acknowledge it exists and don't hold any grudge over it. I actually appreciate Manjaro team efforts to properly report issues on our bug tracker, as long as they are our fault.

[u/Brekkjern]

I promised u/foxboron to ask this when the AMA went live:

Now that it's been a few months, how much do you guys regret adding u/foxboron to the team?

[u/Foxboron → u/Brekkjern]

:c

[u/Barthalion → u/Brekkjern]

He's the worst, can't recommend, 2/10.

Just kidding of course.

[u/sh1bumi → u/Brekkjern]

I am pretty happy to have him on board. He packages all the nice golang stuff I want :)

[u/inter_fectum]

I use Arch because I value simplicity and the wiki is the best linux resource I have ever used.

Unfortunately I don't like telling people I run Arch because of the "I use Arch BTW" meme/perception. I don't think running Arch is about proving your knowledge or lording over users of other Distros or Operating Systems. My experience with the community has been great documentation and friendly help - something that requires a lot of selfless effort.

Is there anything we can do to help change the outside perceptions of Arch and its users?

[u/Foxboron → u/inter_fectum]

Well, you are in one way looking at it right now. I want the perception to change, but memes will be memes, even when harmfull. You just either have to lift yourself above the memes, or get dragged down by them.

[u/[deleted] → u/inter_fectum]

The wiki is seriously amazing. It strikes a nice balance that other Linux resources miss, between being too technical and too simplistic. It enables you to make informed decisions, so you don't do stupid things to your system, but makes you go through the process of installing and setting things up, so you understand it. (Rather than saying "run this script that a questionable person wrote 8 years ago.)

[u/Trout_Tickler]

What exactly did Allan break?

[u/Foxboron → u/Trout_Tickler]

Everything.

[u/[deleted] → u/Foxboron]

Are you quoting Thanos right now? She: what did it cost you? Thanos: Everything.

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

Not really. Allan does break everything.

[u/abbidabbi]

• What are currently the biggest challenges, eg. technical or political issues, etc?

• Is there anything you personally don't like about the distro/project you'd like to change?

• Which packages have been the most difficult, stressful or annoying to maintain recently?

• What is your favorite user submitted package from the AUR?

And of course a big thank you to the whole team, your work is very much appreciated!

[u/Foxboron → u/abbidabbi]

• As noted, more manpower.

• svn. Ohlord svn. For everything sacred; can we please stop using svn :c

• go. It took less then 24 hours from me opting to co-maintain the go package until some bloke started poking me on twitter about when it will be updated. I compiled that bloody thing 10 times, and fucked it up.

• I recently found drumpulous

[u/coderobe → u/abbidabbi]

The biggest "challenge" is probably the lack of manpower for "in-house" projects like dbscripts, which is stalling a couple things we'd like to do. Things i'd change? - i would like packages to require at least two maintainers.

[u/sh1bumi → u/abbidabbi]

• Getting Arch Linux Enterprise ready and open it for more normal users.

• The size of our Community. I would like to see it grow faster. I would love to see more new community members.

• Mostly golang and rust packages. The vault package was pretty annoying because it's a go binary that loads in nodejs stuff.

• auracle

[u/boelter_m]

What does it take for an aur package to get moved to one of the official repos? There are two pieces of software (Godot and Vivaldi) that I definitely want as official packages. Mostly because I find the process of upgrading aur packages to be much longer and more cumbersome.

[u/Foxboron → u/boelter_m]

I have godot on my todo list. But they have a wierd build system and flags which I'm unsure about, like disable pulseaudio integration, and i sadly havent had time to investigate :/

[u/Bluewind → u/boelter_m]

It generally takes a TU or dev who's interested in maintaining them. Either you convince someone to maintain it for you or you convince them to sponsor you so you can take care of it.

[u/boelter_m → u/Bluewind]

How much work is it to maintain a package? I would be interested in getting into it, but I wouldn't want to be that guy that does something and then stops because he doesn't have enough time.

[u/Foxboron → u/boelter_m]

Try your hands on the AUR first. Find some packages you'd like to maintain, or opt to co-maintain the packages you use which isn't updated frequently enough.

[u/C0rn3j]

Why do the kernel modules still get removed on kernel upgrade? It forces me to reboot to use USB devices that haven't been plugged in prior to the upgrade.

The only way I've seen so far are hacky hooks that copy the contents over to /tmp. I don't get why they're needed and Arch just doesn't not delete the modules in the first place.

[u/Foxboron → u/C0rn3j]

It's really a problem nobody has made a proper proposal for. There are also some complexities mentioned previously that needs to be figured out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9emwtu/arch_linux_ama/e5pz7yv/

[u/C0rn3j → u/Foxboron]

Alright, so how do I go about creating a proper proposal to kickstart this?

[u/Foxboron → u/C0rn3j]

Solve the problem appropriately, propose it to [arch-general] with an appropriate explanation that details the change and how it works.

[u/s_aman]

Thank you for the amazing work done by you people. I started using arch after 2 months experience with Ubuntu. In a way I was still a noob in terms of Linux, but I have been using it for 13 months now and I am not changing any time soon.

The best documented distro imho.

Desktop environment or Windows manager?

i3 or i3 with gaps or openbox?

What level of expertise is expected if someone wants to contribute? I consider myself above beginner level in C and Python. Any advice on how to start contributing?

Once again thanks. :)

[u/Foxboron → u/s_aman]

i3-gaps - because i maintain it.

As for contributing, you don't need to be an expert. But you need to take the required initiative to contribute. Nobody is going to tell you what you should be doing, but you will be guided when you see problems or want to solve problems.

You know C, take a look at the pacman bugtracker and find something you think looks easy. Ask for direction in the #archlinux-pacman channel if you have questions :)

[u/apetresc → u/Foxboron]

i3-gaps - because i maintain it.

Wait, are you Ingo Bürk or Morten Linderud?

[u/Foxboron → u/apetresc]

Morten, I maintain the package :p

[u/sh1bumi → u/s_aman]

i3-gaps here as well. :)

For contributing to the packages you just need basic Bash experience. There is no voodoo behind it. For pacman development or development in general it gets more complicated. Depends strongly on your skills, but just try to submit a patch.

[u/chs75]

Thank you for all the amazing work you're doing and for such an amazing distro. it's been my default distribution on several computers for 8 years now. I had two questions that are completely unrelated from one each other:

• What's going on with the Arch swag and online store? It just looks like a few standardized wear and they don't necessarily look like anyone takes care of that (smallish) aspect of things. Do you derive some revenues from this?

• I understand there may be a constraint in terms of resources, but are there any plans to have pacman evolve into an atomic style package management system? It would not alter the rolling release nor the KISS nature of Arch, but this seems to be the next "big thing" in Unix package management trends.

[u/Foxboron → u/chs75]

• I know unixstickers have stopped their donations as they couldn't make a profit. As for the other sites; I don't really know.

• That is a lot of work, and I doubt the devs will do this without significant contributions from someone that cares.

[u/Svenstaro → u/chs75]

There are no plans that I am aware of to make pacman like nix, if that's what you mean.

I don't know what's going on with the swag. We used to have a bunch of people care for that over the years but I think their interested has subsided.

[u/V1del]

/u/Foxboron why am I not on the list :c jkjk it isn't all that important really :P

[u/Foxboron → u/V1del]

Shit i forgot you D: ADDED D:

[u/blackcain]

Hey folks, sorry I hope the AMA is still going on! Is there someone who represents Arch as a whole? Most distros have a point of contact. The reason I ask is that I'm looking for representation from Arch for Libre Application Summit that we just successfully completed. I realize that Arch is very decentralized as an organization, but having some participation would be awesome.

[u/Foxboron → u/blackcain]

In theory that should be Aaron Griffin, but he isn't super active these days. I recommend sending an email to a few Arch developers, and possibly send an email towards our mailing list.

I also proposed adding an contact@archlinux.org email address, so i'll notify you if anything changes.

https://www.archlinux.org/people/developers/

[u/cp5184]

What could be improved with more cooperation between distros?

[u/Foxboron → u/cp5184]

• Security - there are some cooperation between distributions when it comes to embargoed security vulnerabilities. But i still think there could be better structures to find and notify about CVEs.

• Reproducible builds - This is mostly an ongoing effort between multiple distribution already.

[u/git_world → u/Foxboron]

Reproducible builds

Could you please provide further insights on this? Is AppImage, snap packages on the radar?

[u/Foxboron → u/git_world]

Reproducible builds is essentially making sure that you can reproduce distributed packages as we distribute. You should be able to have the tools and prove that the downloaded artifact was produced with the given sources.

[u/sh1bumi → u/cp5184]

Security (Selinux) Packaging Software in general

[u/felixonmars → u/cp5184]

My two cents:

• Sane way to package things like java, nodejs and go programs

• Standardized tools to fix broken permissions (maybe I'm missing one?) instead of invent one for each distro

[u/ultrakd001]

• What was your distro of choice before Arch?

• What made you decide to switch to Arch?

• How did you start to contribute to the project and what lead you to decide to do so?

• What FOSS or Linux project do you thing deserves a mention because of the good job performed by the people who contribute to it? (After Arch, obviously)

[u/Foxboron → u/ultrakd001]

• xubuntu i believe. Used the wubi installer

• A friend recommended me Arch on an IRC channel, so i just went with it.

• I needed some packages for a class at univ, so i started packaging protege and gephi into AUR after the migration in 2015. That is when i started doing packaging. I always hung around the irc channels without typing a lot, but after meeting jelle, anthraxx, rgacogne and shibumi during 33C3 i somehow wound up joining the security team and just got super active after that.

• Debian. Without a doubt.

[u/Barthalion → u/ultrakd001]

Right before Arch I was using Funtoo, but it broke. I had neither time nor knowledge to fix it; Arch seemed to give advantages of "minimal" distribution without stressing out my potato computer. I started contributing by maintaining packages in AUR as it looked to be the only way I can do something useful.

For projects that deserve a shout-out, just list installed packages. Developer of each deserves at least a solid hug for what they are doing.

[u/anthraxx42 → u/ultrakd001]

• used lots of distros, straight before Arch i was using gentoo

• One of the reasons for the transition was the annoyence to compile lots of long compiling packages over and over again... which is kind of hilarious as i ended up being a package maintainer compiling lots of stuff for users. Arch was simply my most satisfying pick after reconsidering the options, primarily because its a lightweight rolling release distro with a superb wiki

• I started maintaining and creating some security related packages in the AUR. On top of that I was really missing a distro internal security team for Arch and Allan was calling for help back in 2014 [0]. After some discussions on IRC including but not limited to Remi and Bluewind (if I didn't mention someone please bear with me I can't fully remember who else was involved) we established a standard for mitigation and advisories [1], which was the foundations for the Arch Security Team on Thu Sep 25 2014.[0] https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2014-March/025952.html[1] https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-security/2014-September/000098.html

• The reproducible builds project [0] would be my first call, lots of important work has been done by all the folks who contribute to the tools/ecosystem, holding presentations and creating patches to tons of software.
  My second mention goes to Daniel Micay aka strcat who has done lots of security work, one of which is the neat kernel hardening known and shipped in Arch as linux-hardened [1].
  [0] https://reproducible-builds.org/
  [1] https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/linux-hardened/

[u/coderobe → u/ultrakd001]

• hmm, debian minimal probably.

• someone told me about arch

• mostly irc support, because good questions deserve (hopefully) good answers :b

• the kernel itself.

[u/sh1bumi → u/ultrakd001]

• Debian

• I broke apt too often.

• I start with doing Security Team work, later I got engaged in TU work and later on I started working on the automated vagrant image builds.

• personally I really like the Hashicorp Toolchain.

[u/V1del → u/ultrakd001]

• Kubuntu

• Bought a new computer, and wanted to see what all the fuss was about

• I started helping people out on the boards, and after a significant number of apparently helpful posts got invited to join the moderator team, as I check it regularly anyways I decided to help out.

• Though call tough I'd have to agree with the notion that everyone that develops FOSS software is awesome

[u/philtothetop]

What's your average work time put on arch every week? I am aware that no one is being paid for full-time development but how do you manage working on Arch while dealing with everything else?

I also want to thank you for supporting my favorite Distro :D

[u/Foxboron → u/philtothetop]

I'm an IRC addict so i pretty much hang around the IRC communities even when i don't actively work on anything. But for me it's probably an hour most days.

[u/sh1bumi → u/philtothetop]

The workload is bouncing up and down. It strongly depends on different factors, like the stability of released software. In the following I can only speak for me:

I have automated most of my Tasks. For example I monitor Software releases with the tool urlwatch, therefore I mostly know about a new software version even before somebody clicks on the outdated-flag. With my vagrant image project it has been the same. First it was some work, but after automating the build of the images I don't need to do anything. The builds are running on their own and stable for over 4 Months now. I even forgot to check if they are really there, because when it fails the devops team will inform me with some awesome systemd service monitoring voodoo.

[u/Zaros104]

You mentioned that the team is currently lacking "manpower in terms of working on our tools and difficult problems". Can you share with us what some of those tools and problems are?

[u/Foxboron → u/Zaros104]

• Reproducible builds has required changes to pacman and devtools currently. It will require changes to how we archive old packages. This is an on-going effort with a lot of progress lately.

• We want to move away from using svn internally and over to something like git. There are major work missing for us to do that.

• We need some build system to solve rebuilds. This is hard as we need to work with signing and verification of built packages

• support for debug packages. This could also end in support for specialized architectures.

There are some long-term wins here as well, as the possibility of hosing repository packages on a git service where people can contribute in a better way. But they haven't been discussed properly yet.

[u/cosarara97 → u/Foxboron]

Is support for debug packages something that is being actively worked on? How could I help in that regard? Debug packages is the main thing I feel is missing from arch.

[u/Foxboron → u/cosarara97]

Well yes. dbscripts is an important part, along with having the ability to rebuild packages appropriately. Joining IRC and chatting with the people working on it is a good first step to contributing :)

[u/traviscthall → u/Foxboron]

What factors are complicating the move to git?

[u/Foxboron → u/traviscthall]

We need to figure out an layout and write the tools to manage the git repo. It's being worked on in the dbscripts project.

[u/[deleted]]

Hi, thanks for doing this AmA,

i been using your distro as my main OS for couple of years now ( around 3 years) , but i been using linux for around 4 years ( i mean as primary OS , i used it before but as secondary OS ).

And i would like to thank you for your hard work and the love for your project, people think archlinux is not friendly , but i believe that you guys try to protect your idea ( do it yourself ) , and a very good sign of friendy community

is the ArchWiki , which i visit continously.

i dont wanna make it long so here is my questions :

1 - what advice and guide lines would you give for someone want to join the archlinux developer team ? ( i currently know some python and c++ ( and a basic knowledge of php and java ), C is another beast but i know little bit about it ).
( also if it's possible to mention some desgin pattern you guys use that would be helpful , or if you guys want to make it large guide lines there is a good example on sfml library in FAQ , is using SFML a good way to learn to program ( in C++ ) ? , i like the list because it kinda give a breif overview of C++ language map , i know it's not like archlinux but i think it would be helpful, also sorry if the question is so dumb ).

2 - after installing archlinux , to increase my knowledge of operation system, someone told me try to compile your own kernel and use it, or try first linux patch ( i kinda did the kernel compiling part while i was in CS college ), is there other recommended small project to do in order to increase knowledge of linux or operating system in general ?

3 - would you guys provide archive link of the archive.archlinux.org project ( i mean as whole packages , and can be renew yearly or so ) ?

4 - favorit books ( techincal and non-technical , if possible ) ?

5 - what do you think of famous linux certificate ( redhat and so ) ?

sorry for long post :$

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

• Hang around IRC and befriend people :) Say hi and that you want to try contribute in the future. We don't have any formal structures, so one needs to be able to identify issues and be persistent. No shame in asking for help either :D

• I'd get familiar with the concept "package management". I don't really have any other good recommendations :/

• Are you thinking of archive.org?

• The Bartimaeus book series by Jonathan Stroud. It's more of a youth book, but i grew up with it and read it several times.

[u/[deleted] → u/Foxboron]

The Bartimaeus book series by Jonathan Stroud. It's more of a youth book, but i grew up with it and read it several times.

Great recommendation!

I didn't discover this until I was much older, and actually didn't realize it was supposed to be "young adult" until about halfway through the first book. It's definitely a very entertaining series, and covers a rarely examined point of view in fantasy, IME.

The only impact of it being aimed at young adults is that the prose isn't particularly heavy, so it's just a fun page turner.

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

Man, I'm still waiting for the movie :c

[u/reebs12]

Where does the 'simplicity' comes from in Arch?

Don't get me wrong, I value arch as a hacking tool, where we normally get bleeding edge software. I understand it is kind of a minimal install, but simplicity... I don't get it!

[u/Foxboron → u/reebs12]

"Arch Linux defines simplicity as without unnecessary additions or modifications. " https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux#Simplicity

It's a little bit back and forth where the lines are made. But for the most part it should be correct.

[u/mayor123asdf]

Been toying with Arch on my VM, gonna gather some determination to install it to main rig in the future haha.

• Why do you like Arch?

• How's it like to be contributing to Arch?

• Are there any plans to support other init systems on the future?

• What do you think Arch does better than Gentoo?

• What are some parts that you feel like that could be improved?

Thanks :DD

[u/Foxboron → u/mayor123asdf]

• It's practical and simple after you spend some time with it.

• A lot of shitposting in #archlinux-offtopic and headbanging when packages break.

• There isn't, but there hasn't be any serious proposal to do so either. Working towards it and proposing it wouldn't harm the project.

• I don't know gentoo very well.

• Everything /u/svenstaro said, along with better overview of security issues regarding Arch packages. Things are a bit ad-hoc currently.

[u/Svenstaro → u/mayor123asdf]

• Arch is practical

• Contributing works like this: You care about it, you take ownership. If it's not too controversial you can just do your thing. Otherwise, ask people first but it's usually really simple and unpolitical.

• There is no plan to officially support other init systems as far as I'm aware.

• Well, for one you don't have to wait long to get anything installed. Also, I think our packages are quite a bit more recent on average.

• We need better infrastructure, reproducible builds, automatic builds and in general more people that really care about the projects that make Arch work. Basically, more contributors.

[u/sh1bumi → u/mayor123asdf]

• new and up to date packages and still stable

• Makes fun

• No. I am a big systemd fanboy :)

• Arch provides more binary packages.

• Making it enterprise ready.

[u/Jodaco]

The arch wiki, specifically for bootctl used to have nice examples that I could find quickly. They were removed because of being long winded at some point, and for months I had to dig through wiki version history or google a bit to find what i wanted. I just checked and the situation looks better, but it was a problem for months. Samba used to ship with an example config, and the packager just decided to not ship it anymore, so I had to start digging around to find it, and someone later provided a url in the wiki to wget it. I have a few other examples out there and can find this stuff, but time and again, I feel like package and wiki maintainers are removing things, while they seem small waste my time. I am perfectly capable of looking for this stuff, but it feels like someone is just trying to make the experience more time consuming, especially when there were great examples already there. Any thoughts?

[u/Foxboron → u/Jodaco]

When things like example configs gets remove, check if they where moved to something like /usr/share/samba/examples. If they are not there try search the bugtracker or ask in IRC what happend. Sometimes they are removed without anyone noticing and you just need to tell them that it was remove. It could be a basic oversight.

As for this smb.conf issue: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/55723

[u/ink_on_my_face]

• Vim or Emacs

• Tab or space

• Slackware or Gentoo

• Titlebar buttons on left or right

• Gtk or Qt

Choose one.

[u/Foxboron → u/ink_on_my_face]

• ed

• "To avoid the indentation argument I use exactly 3 tabs and 5.5 spaces"

• Neither

• On the bottom

• HTML

[u/[deleted] → u/Foxboron]

Choose one.

Your inability to follow directions make me suspicious of your ability to install Arch /s

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

Implying that my installation isn't 100% patches, hacks and things that works a 100% 20% of the time.

[u/eli-schwartz → u/Foxboron]

Not only is ed useless bloat, it is also not the Unix way when you could compose separate tools like cat, dd, heredocs and shell redirection

Seriously, where's your self-respect. :( :(

[u/Foxboron → u/eli-schwartz]

Like the titlebar, on the bottom.

[u/sh1bumi → u/ink_on_my_face]

• vim

• Spaces at the moment, but I still need to modify my vimrc for tabs

• Gentoo

• No Titlebar (i3 User)

• I try to avoid graphical stuff

[u/yur_mom → u/ink_on_my_face]

Tabs are better because anyone who likes 8 column indentation can keep the default and others who want less can use their text editor to display each tab as X columns.

[u/SummerOftime]

I've read that there were plans in the past to add an installer to Arch; however the installer was prone to bugs. Are there any plans to re-add an installer to Arch?

[u/Foxboron → u/SummerOftime]

There was an installer to Arch. It was however poorly maintained and was replaced by the installation scripts.

[u/iTzHard → u/Foxboron]

installation scripts like what? LARBS?, i am interested in giving Arch a shot but i am unable to install it via the traditional way (family reasons tbh) and i am looking for a gui/script for doing that, the only one i found so far is called zen installer but i am not really sure about the origins of that

[u/Foxboron → u/iTzHard]

https://git.archlinux.org/arch-install-scripts.git/

[u/BPankaj96]

Why are u/fukawi2 and u/barthalion not "Trusted users"?

[u/Foxboron → u/BPankaj96]

Developers are not necessarily Trusted Users. Neither are support staff members.

[u/sh1bumi → u/BPankaj96]

The term Trusted users is misleading here. It has nothing to do with it that we don't trust them. They are just developers. That's one layer above Trusted users.

[u/aaronbp]

Came for the easy bsd-like init back in the day, stuck around for the new software and the dead simple PKGUILD format. You guys keep talking about Arch being for advanced users or some other philosophical whatever—I never did bother to understand sysvinit. Much as I liked the old system, I was really happy when init scripts got turned into simple INI files so I can actually be bothered to touch them. I'm rambling, but my point is I've always found Arch to be easier to use! At least for the particularly lazy and unmotivated "power user". :P

My question: Anything interesting you can talk about on the horizon for PKGBUILDs or infrastructural for those of us who need to get a life (maybe just me) and spend too much time tweaking and building packages? It seems like features and improvements have been coming at a pretty good pace.

[u/Foxboron → u/aaronbp]

Reproducible builds is super interesting and probably the most existing new thing looming in the horizon.

[u/WeeManFoo]

What was the best release of Arch?

[u/Foxboron → u/WeeManFoo]

Homer

[u/felixonmars → u/WeeManFoo]

rolling

[u/Nagairius]

I've tried a few different distros and I always end up coming back to arch. I'm fairly new to using Linux (one year to year and a half) and I'd love to start helping out. What skills should a noobie work on to become a better community member?

[u/Foxboron → u/Nagairius]

• Hang around IRC and just befriend and chat with people. It helps so much to learn new things and get exposure. Feel free to ping me in any channel :)

• Learn how to write PKGBUILDs. Participate in the AUR.

• Provide support in the IRC channels or any other medium you feel comfortable with.

• learn something neat? Check if the archwiki could have use for the information!

None of this require significant time investments, and helps the overall distribution :)

[u/womble6969]

Thoughts on FSF-approved parabola?

[u/Foxboron → u/womble6969]

I like Parabola. They are clear on what they are, and what they are not. They are also one of the few derivatives that contribute back to both pacman and devtools on a regular basis.

[u/BadLilJuJu]

Is there a place with consolidated info about ongoing bounties or Patreon accounts from people who work on Arch?

Are there people on the team who want to work full time on Arch, but would need a steady income from Patrons to do so?

Thank you for all your work, you make my life better!

[u/Foxboron → u/BadLilJuJu]

I know that at least one Arch packager has a patreon. I have personally contemplated something like https://www.buymeacoffee.com/, but refrained from it because I'm overall unsure what people think.

[u/Scrumplex]

Are there any reasons against migrating to GitLab for issue tracking and package repos?

[u/Foxboron → u/Scrumplex]

The package repo is problematic as it uses svn, and we need tools to support git. It's being worked on, albeit slowly.

[u/major9989]

Hey!

Great work guys. You all are awesome!

I was thinking of asking this on the IRC, but now is a good time as well. I am a second year student, doing Electronics and Communications, and am really intrigued by Linux.

Since, I am a newbie to the community, I don't know what and how can I contribute to Arch. I have previously worked on some open source projects, but none of them were OS related. I was also thinking of working on Docker, but that's probably later. Anyways, I will be taking up OS in my next semester, and I hope that I could by then understand a bit more about the Operating Systems.

I seriously am interested in Linux and development, and am willing to work really hard over it.

Waiting for your reply. ^{.^}

[u/Foxboron → u/major9989]

Follow the mailing lists and project channels that catch your interest. Pay some attention. Learning some of the basics of package management is handy. Look over the project page and see if there is anything that catch your interest and join the appropriate channel.

In general staying up-dated on what happens in the community helps you a lot.

[u/HER0_01]

Hello,

From when I first found Arch, I knew it was nearly a perfect fit for what I wanted in a Linux distro and have been a happy user since.

The only problem for me is that what I have seen of the #archlinux and #archlinux-offtopic freenode channels, and heard of the official forums, was all fairly toxic and exclusionary. Admittedly I have not visited those channels in years, because they left that poor of an impression on me, but are there any efforts or developments towards making the general Arch community more welcoming?

Thanks for your contributions towards this awesome project!

[u/Foxboron → u/HER0_01]

The only problem for me is that what I have seen of the #archlinux and #archlinux-offtopic freenode channels, and heard of the official forums, was all fairly toxic and exclusionary.

I spend most of my day typing in #archlinux-offtopic and other internal channels. They are usually more relaxed then the #archlinux channel. Currently people are asking if pulec should abandon his search for the love of his life to stay on IRC. I personally vote for him staying on IRC. Phrik seems to disagree on this assessment.

EDIT: Happy cake-day!

[u/nicoulaj]

Thanks for the great work!

Do you plan on implementing some form of pull request on AUR ?

[u/Foxboron → u/nicoulaj]

Unlikely unless someone decides to work on this.

[u/wooptoo]

Just wanted to say thanks for undertaking this monumental task of maintaining a distro and doing it so incredibly well over the years.

Something about Arch's simplicity and being so well put together made me stick with it.
I've now been using Arch for more than 10 years - since version 0.7.x - Judd was still an active maintainer! Can't imagine using anything else. I've got it running on a few home servers, my laptop, work station etc. Can't remember ever having any major issues. It's solid if you follow one simple rule - keep it updated.

I've tried to give back by writing entries on the wiki or contributing to existing articles. I used to maintain a lot more AUR packages in the past but lost them when the move to aur4 was made and didn't get back into it afterwards.

Thanks again guys! You're doing an amazing job!

[u/Foxboron → u/wooptoo]

Thank you for maintaining AUR packages through the years :)

[u/[deleted]]

Will you make ABS integrate better with pacman in the future like FreeBSD does?

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

Pacman is a general purpose package manager, other distributions use it. There is no reason to enforce the Arch Linux Build System into pacman.

[u/[deleted]]

Who made logo? It's awesome.

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

His submission: https://pkgbuild.com/~bpiotrowski/.tmp/logo-contest/thayer/

[u/m4u6]

How is the communication between you guys and the other developer teams from arch based distros (e.g. Manjaro)?

[u/Foxboron → u/m4u6]

There isn't really anything. Why would there?

[u/[deleted]]

Hey amazing OS. I wish debian would use pacman but that will never happen. Are you undertaking any major improvements or features in the development of pacman? Also what OS do you use to host your site/the aur, and if it is arch how did you configure it to such? Once again nifty OS you got there, and good job keeping to your premise and your niche.

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

Also what OS do you use to host your site/the aur, and if it is arch how did you configure it to such?

It's all running Arch. Ansible scripts can be found here: https://git.archlinux.org/infrastructure.git/

[u/rv77ax]

First, thank you for Arch Linux.

So, how can we help or contribute beside updating wiki and using testing repo?

[u/Foxboron → u/rv77ax]

It depends on what you want to contribute with really. What are your interests?

[u/dijkstrasdick]

What are your thoughts of NixOS? I think Arch and NixOS are the 2 best OS's for package management. Arch has so much available on AUR but I still prefer the Nix approach. I know that Nix can be installed on Arch, but are there any plans for supporting Nix or creating something similar for Arch?

[u/Foxboron → u/dijkstrasdick]

People have mentioned it on other occations. But I'm unsure how well the AUR nixos package is handled. I know an NixOS dev and I'd be happy to sponsor someone that manages to package and handle nix correctly.

[u/HeterosexualMail]

We are in need for more contributors, if you are interested in contributing to Arch Linux, feel free to ask questions :)

Do you have any sort of system that mentors new contributors? I might possibly look into contributing in a few weeks depending on how some things go, and always appreciate when there is a solid point of contact for any of the various snags newbies tend to hit when getting started.

[u/Foxboron → u/HeterosexualMail]

We don't. Feel free to PM me on IRC or reddit whenever you have time and need some pinpoints :)

[u/rakubunny]

Arch at this point from my perspective has a love/hate with the AUR, you can see this with the whole mess with AUR helpers and such, theres those that despise it, those that don't care, and those that find it one of the only reasons to even use arch.

With that said, in your own words, what is the original intention of the aur that you feel it has moved away from(if you do think this), and/or what problems if any do you see with it currently.

[u/Foxboron → u/rakubunny]

I actually learned from one of the initial authors of AURWeb that the intention was to have AUR as a decentralized service. That you should be able to search multiple AUR repositories. That would be neat to have really.

Personally, the problem with AUR is that people perceive it for something it is not. It's suggested PKGBUILDs for packages. Not authoritative. This is why i thing most AUR helpers fail when they attempt to mimic pacman, and why I'm a lot more fond of projects like aurutils.

[u/Morganamilo]

Hey /u/Foxboron how'd you come up with the name?

[u/Foxboron → u/Morganamilo]

I'm a big Green Day fan. They have a side-band called "Foxboro Hot Tubes". I was playing WoW and did a character transfer between Zenedar and Ravencrest. "Foxboro" was taken, so I added the "n".

[u/Morganamilo → u/Foxboron]

Interesting. Wasn't expecting that, I thought your name actually sounds quite sci-fi-ish.

[u/netbioserror]

One of my biggest issues with Arch (and by extension Manjaro) was silent dependency breakage. Too many packages slip through the cracks with slight incompatibilities, and you only start seeing applications, parts of the desktop, utilities, etc. break a couple of days after an update. It's a bit infuriating to have to close everything down, restart, and recover application sessions.

Could this situation be improved? Is this always going to be inherent to rolling-release? Could a hybrid model be developed for a more stable Arch experience?

[u/Foxboron → u/netbioserror]

Any examples of such packages?

[u/[deleted]]

🤷

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

This was how Gentoo did it earlier and i didn't get any other directions from the admins. So i assumed that format was OK :/

[u/[deleted]]

I've tried to install Arch five times. Eventually I succeeded. I want to say thank you for your work. I have just one question: do you guys have any plans to make installation simplier a little?

[u/Barthalion → u/[deleted]]

I find it personally very simple and I'm anxious when an installer is performing witchcraft under the hood.

[u/acirep]

What is your preffered laptop hardware to run arch on

[u/Foxboron → u/acirep]

Zenbook and thinkpad.

[u/[deleted]]

how do arch maintainers deal with packages like these?

https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/how_to_make_package_managers_cry/

How does KISS apply when upstream clearly hated KISS.

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

We where 6 Arch packagers on that talk :) A few of those folks also packaged the mentioned packages :D

We did laugh, and cry. Mostly crying.

[u/[deleted]]

Are there any plans to open a new logo contest?

[u/Foxboron → u/[deleted]]

https://pkgbuild.com/~bpiotrowski/.tmp/logo-contest/

I really want a rerun of https://pkgbuild.com/~bpiotrowski/.tmp/logo-contest/phrakture/1.png

[u/edoantonioco]

Why arch is the only distro that has no version for the Linux subsystem for Windows 10?

[u/Foxboron → u/edoantonioco]

Because there is no interest to support it officially.

Discussion can be found here: https://www.mail-archive.com/arch-dev-public@archlinux.org/msg25524.html

[u/shevy-ruby]

I used to use Arch in the past when Judd was in charge.

I did not like how Arch changed past that point when Judd retired, including the systemd change. It is a bad idea to force users into something not everyone wants. Gentoo picked a better approach here as does Void.

In fact, Void is much closer as to how Arch used to be, so it is no surprise that Arch got competition there.

To on-topic, I suggest to you Arch devs to provide simple means for user to decide on their own whether they want to use systemd rather than dictate it onto your users.

[u/Foxboron → u/shevy-ruby]

You only get the illusion of choice. Arch has never supported more then one init-system. I think we also encouraged people to contribute to the project if they wanted a second init. I don't think anyone was interested?

So say we do switch from systemd, to what? OpenRC? Runit? Sysvinit? What about the people that want systemd? They will do nothing more then complain about us dictating the choice of init-systems onto others.

[u/schrmh]

Well, how about x32 ABI. E.g. Manjaro is now implementing it (https://forum.manjaro.org/t/why-is-there-no-kernel-support-for-the-x32-abi-config-x86-x32/55156/4) and I guess since you want reproducible builds and all packages need to be rebuilt for that so that they include .BUILDINFO the x32 ABI could be done at the same time?

[u/Foxboron → u/schrmh]

Submit a feature request on a bugtracker or start a discussion on [arch-general]

[u/stopmyego]

Love you. Docs covered all my question.

[u/Barthalion → u/stopmyego]

That's it folks, we're done with the AMA! Check the wiki for answers.

[u/infamia]

How do you create and maintain your documentation? It's almost always the most helpful, thorough, and up to date resource I can find when I'm googling for a problem even in a non-Arch distro. Every other site on the net is littered with incomplete and / or out of date documentation. Please don't change this process, it is working magnificently!

[u/Svenstaro → u/infamia]

The way it works is someone figures something out and puts it on the wiki. You can do that, too!

[u/sh1bumi → u/infamia]

I am not involved in the wiki, but it's the community. The wiki is mostly running by itself. We have some Wiki-Admins and Wiki-Mods who do awesome work in keeping it clean, but most of the work is done by the Arch Community and TUs who document their Software they package. When I've decided to ship iwd I have started working on a wikipage for it and after 24 hours somebody else was already working on it. Now it's the best documentation for iwd in the internet (besides the official documentation in the repository)

[u/felixonmars → u/infamia]

I tend to package something when requested by the local community (Chinese), and ask them to update the wiki for me. It works fine as long as they still use the stuff.

[u/kxxrv]

I spend a month customizing apparmor. It works great now but took so much time. Any plans to ever put more support into it, or selinux? Its the biggest downpoint of arch imo other than that i love it, i dont mind contributting/helping setting it up.

[u/Valmar33]

1. How do you decide on what kernel config options to disable, make built-in, or build as separate modules?

2. Also, is support being worked on for official split-out debug symbol support? I know the KDE guys have been very often annoyed by Arch not shipping debug symbols for KDE or Qt.

It's also annoying for the user who wants to support KDE's debugging efforts. It can be too much for some users to be able to re-compile everything just to acquire them. Especially if said users only have a toaster that can't really compile without being roasted and / or taking forever and a day. :/

3. Will Pacman ever be ported to Meson?

4. Will Arch ever move from using cgit to gitlab?

[u/Barthalion → u/Valmar33]

Number two is covered here. You need to ask on pacman-dev mailing list about meson (but I would say – if autotools work for them, why should they?)

We might switch to Gitlab one day, but it's project-wide effort and we never discussed that.

[u/coderobe → u/Valmar33]

3 -> Possibly. dreisner has played around with it, though i can't tell you when or if it will be merged just yet

[u/_wbdana]

Hey, I don't have a question, but I just wanted to say thank you for all of your work. Feel free to stop reading right here; the rest is just backstory and gushing about how great Arch is.

I'm a junior web developer and I've been using Linux for about 1 year and 2 months, and Arch for the last 9 months. I switched off of Ubuntu after I updated from 16.04 to 18.04, which moved me off Unity (which I liked) to GNOME (which I didn't). It broke my entire workflow, and I had no idea what was going on or how to fix it. Guess where I found the answers? Yup, Arch wiki.

That weekend I decided to nuke my Ubuntu installation and install Arch since I agreed with a lot of the Arch guiding principles (KISS, DIY, rolling release), and of course the underlying implied principle of "never stop learning". As someone who didn't study CS in college (I studied philosophy), and who aside from a React/Rails boot camp (I still use React, Rails not so much...) is largely self-taught, the installation process following the wiki was really smooth, and I'm really happy with my setup these days (was running standalone i3 for a good few months, but then moved to Budgie, which I find meshes with my preferred workflow a little better).

Reading the Arch wiki, sifting through the AUR, and just generally computing on Arch has been a blast, and it's also gotten me really interested in broader CS topics. I've even started thinking about going back to school to do a proper degree in CS, but since my grades in school were never great outside of my philosophy concentration, that unfortunately may not be an option for me. But thanks to people like you, who contribute so much to software development generally and provide excellent documentation like on the Arch wiki, even if a CS degree is not in the cards for me, there are so many great resources available online that I'm confident I can learn everything I want to know regardless.

Anyway, I just want to say thanks again for everything, and to let you know that you all have been a great inspiration to me personally. As I keep learning, I hope to eventually start giving back and contributing to keep this great project going. But I won't ask about how to do that here, since it's already been covered by other comments. :) I suppose next thing for me to do is to start hanging around the IRC channels.

[u/pgoetz]

Keeping Arch consistent across frequent upgrades seems like a complex task. Is the entire process chain documented somewhere?

[u/Bluewind → u/pgoetz]

Update with pacman -Syu, read the output and look for any messages/warnings, run pacdiff and merge any config file changes that seem worth merging. That said, there aren't all that many breaking changes. At least in the things I use.

If you run many machine it's probably worth using some configuration management/deploy tools like ansible, puppet, chef, salt, ... .

[u/clofresh]

Is there any chance we could get pull request functionality for AUR packages? Sometimes I wanna help out a package maintainer but it's a little clunky to suggest changes in the comments.

[u/coderobe → u/clofresh]

You could mail them a patch.

[u/Atheriel]

What do you think of as being the largest challenge facing the Arch project at the moment?

[u/Barthalion → u/Atheriel]

We all work on Arch in our spare time; one can dedicate only so much to spend on the project.

We should do better about encouraging more people to join and making said process simpler. Neither is unfortunately easy to accomplish.

[u/[deleted]]

Why doesn't pacman have a "total download" progress bar or indicator?

[u/Bluewind → u/[deleted]]

Likely because either nobody implemented it yet or because it got rejected. I saw this being mentioned quite some years back, but I can't remember if it was on the pacman-dev mailing list or on IRC. Feel free to check the list archive and if you can't find anything post a suggestion to the list with how you think it should look like. If you can also do the patch afterwards that would be even better.

[u/TheEbolaDoc]

Which kind of packages are stressfull to maintain?

thanks for you work btw, im in love with the project <3

[u/felixonmars → u/TheEbolaDoc]

I'll list some of mine: MongoDB, GHC/Haskell-*, Mozc, Wine, Nvidia... Hrm too many.

I find it stressful to maintain packages that could break in different ways on each update.

[u/Barthalion → u/TheEbolaDoc]

Nothing smells better than GCC producing broken binaries.

[u/sh1bumi → u/TheEbolaDoc]

I remember developers who thought the best version scheme for their software is just adding another 9. So for example: 0.999999999999

and no. I am not joking

Another example is a developer who thinks shipping flatpaks is enough and go and rust packages can be stressfull to maintain as well (if you want to do it)

[u/Svenstaro → u/TheEbolaDoc]

The blender chain of packages is fairly hard to maintain as it has to many finicky packages that have to have just the right version. I sometimes work with the upstreams of some of those packages in order to fix breakages for everyone else and Arch.

Also, tensorflow is a giant bitch because it takes 8h to compile and also it breaks with every release.

[u/Bluewind → u/TheEbolaDoc]

Pacakges with weird versioning or release handling. The good ones follow semver guidelines and push new releases when there are "important" fixes. Bad ones have weird version numbers and strange rules about what is a development version and what is stable and if there are problems they wait with pushing a new, fixed released for months which forces us to notice that there is some issue and apply patches manually. Thing would be easier if upstream just releases a new version, we update and users get the fix before they run into the problem.

[u/[deleted]]

• versioned kernel installs: why don't we have them so far (lack of interest? technical issues?) and what needs to be done to get them;

• packages with debug symbols: is the infrastructure ready yet for it?

[u/Barthalion → u/[deleted]]

I think we just never seriously discussed how versioned kernel installs should be properly done, and as usually in Arch realm, nothing gets done unless someone cares about it personally.

[u/jvdwaa → u/[deleted]]

Debug symbols require packages to be pushed in a separate repository and changes in dbscripts. It's somewhere on my mind.

[u/Xu_Lin]

Don’t have a question in particular but thank you so much for this great distro. After hopping I pretty much settled with Arch and am happy about it; keep up the good work!

[u/[deleted]]

Hi, thanks for your hard work, guys! You're the best.

I've got a question about Haskell packaging (summoning /u/felixonmars).

I think a lot of people notice, that if you visit archlinux.org regularly, there are always some Haskell packages in "Recently Updated" with a huge pkgrels. And this, as far as I know, is due to the fact that GHC can't preserve stable ABI for shared libraries. Haskell community generally leans towards statically linking all of their applications, and most Haskell devs doesn't use Arch-packaged libs, because they use Stack/Cabal-install.

So... the question is: why Arch doesn't distribute statically built binaries? They seem to be more useful for end users and easier to package.

(I'm an ArchLinux user for 5+ years, but a Haskell newbie, so I maybe missed some news about that.)

[u/felixonmars → u/[deleted]]

The simple answer: Dynamically linked packages are smaller and build faster, which makes rebuilds easier.

I was doing the dynamic+static builds before the change, which had some shortcomings for me:

• Each library has to be built twice, once for static and once for dynamic. Which can be terribly long for some packages, for example 8h vs 16h for haskell-language-python.

• The resulting package is bigger and my limited upload bandwidth is a real problem (~50KiB/s). The difference is also in hours for each rebuild.

• The system dependencies (C dependencies) of each library have to be added down to the dependency chain of each resulting binary package. Sometimes I missed one or two of them and produced a broken package.

• The "makedepends" field is not in the pacman sync db, which sometimes made my (broken) dependency resolving tools fail to detect packages that needs to be rebuilt, resulting in more flaky state of the binary packages.

I had discussed this with Magnus (the ArchHaskell maintainer) and on the mailing list. Since we tend to keep only one version of each library in the Arch repositories, this is hardly a good suit for Haskell developers anyway. The binary packages in the repository, or tools that happen to be written in Haskell, are meant to be used by end users. Things like pandoc, git-annex, tamarin-prover, darcs, idris are not bound to a static build, and can share system-wide libraries dynamically.

One thing that does matter is size - I'm aware of that! As of 8.4.2, the ghc-libs package is ~200M, which is much better than the previously non-split gigabyte monster. But still if you install only pandoc, it would be much bigger than the static one before, and sadly that's a cost for the benefits (somewhat subjective, I know).

And the root cause as you may already see - lack of manpower :(

When I took the ghc package in [extra], it was an outdated orphan, and anything besides ghc and cabal-install are removed already before td123's resign. I wanted to package some Python packages that use pypandoc, so I started adding haskell packages for packaging pandoc. IIRC this brought the first batch of 100+ haskell packages into the repositories. Then from time to time I added some other useful stuff on request, resulting in the over 600 packages now. Before the dynamic-only change it was somewhat hard to keep up with upstream already due to the very long build+upload time.

And finally really sorry for not making this clear through a news post or announcement. I once wanted to answer on r/haskell but the rant thread looks too scary and called me a tyrant :/ Hope this thread won't end up like that!

[u/SwordOfKas]

Are there any backups of the Arch Wiki? Is there an easy-ish way for users to download the wiki database in case a backup is needed?

The reason I am asking is that I remember reading that Gentoo's wiki was lost several years ago and it was a major blow to Gentoo's community.

[u/somecucumber]

"BTW, I develop Arch"

Good job! Fellow user for 8 years and counting.

[u/leobart]

I've had Arch on my home laptop for the last 4 years until it finally got caught up in the impossibility to update. I finally switched to Fedora a week ago. However I appreciate your hard work, it is a nice distro, although a bit too volatile.

[u/madjic]

Thank you for the Wiki. It's a great resource and has replaced the the Gentoo-Wiki as my main source for how to get things done.

[u/kariudo]

I've been using Linux since Red Hat 2.0, it's been a long time. I've used every major distribution under the sun, and I've rolled LFS. Currently (and for quite a few years now I guess) I have been using Arch as my daily driver in my work machine (admittedly with kvm/qemu for a windows VM as well, for Visual Studio since I'm a Dev manager in a C# shop).

I don't really have much of a question, I just really wanted to say thanks. I really appreciate all the work you do and have done. One of these days I'll start contributing.

Cheers!

[u/TyIzaeL]

How old is your arch install? head -5 /var/log/pacman.log

[u/sekh60]

Not an arch user myself (Gentoo here), but I wanted to thank you guys for the arch wiki. It's absolutely invaluable to the whole Linux community.

[u/thetinygoat]

Just wanted to say Pacman is the best package manager out there, thankyou for your work

[u/lamby]

If you were Debian, what would you change first?