Hi MarsSeed,

I respectfully disagree with the request here (and the other
ones). Please see my comments inline.

<not...@aur.archlinux.org> 于2023年10月15日周日 03:28写道:
>
> MarsSeed [1] filed a deletion request for android-sdk-platform-tools-
> dummy [2]:
>
> Dummy packages are not useful to provide to a package manager, and
> they are not allowed on AUR.
>
> Having a dummy package installed defeats the purpose of using a
> package manager.

There are always package distributions that doesn't fit with the
standard package management, which is explained by the existence of
the /opt directory.

> If a package requires another package, there's a good reason for it,
> and both should be installed in the system for them to work.

I don't think so, there are packages that may depend on these Android
tools, and these dummy packages can provide that dependency for them,
as a valid alternative to installing the original package. e.g., a
number of packages may provide adb, and one may want to use the (more
up-to-date) version from official Android SDK.

> No one forces anyone to install Android IDE's and Android SDK's /
> platform tools they use for development into the system. They can live
> happily inside the user's home folder as well. In that case, the user
> is not using pacman to manage those installations.

They can live in user's home directory, but they don't have to. Having
them live inside /opt/ brings the additional benefit that it can act
as a valid alternative dependency for other packages, and that it can
be (almost) always usable/used by everything else in the system.

These dummy packages also helps a lot in holding and tracking the
depdencies of the actual content, which may be prone to be uninstalled
or at least hard to manage without such a dummy package.

They may also provide useful system level configurations, e.g. systemd
service definitions.

> If an AUR package requires Android SDK platform tools, both should be
> managed by the package manager. Developers have to ensure that they
> have sufficient storage space on their system for their particular
> developer activity, and disk space is not that expensive nowadays.

I don't see a reason that they absolutely have to be both managed by
the package manager. And I don't think it's about disk space (I agree
with you that disk space is less of a problem), but more about
allowing alternative versions of the dependency (even if it lives
under /opt/ and is updated outside package manager for convenience).

All in all, the philosophy of Arch Linux includes pragmatism & user
centrality, and I believe in this case keeping these dummy packages
for Android SDK is well justified for that considering the rationale
above. So I hope you would be okay with dropping these
deletion requests.

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