Avoiding patches vs disabling update-notifications

Question

This refers to the sublime-text-nightly AUR package. It is my understanding that we should disable update notifications, since they mean little to the end users as they have to wait for the packager to update the software anyway.
In this case the software is supplied as a precompiled tarball which will automatically, when started, call home and check for updates. This can be disabled in a system-wide or in a user specific configuration file. So the options are either to do nothing and for the user to find the option themselves if they wish and disable the update notification, or to patch the default configuration file when packaging to disable the update notifications.
Which is the recommended approach?

Answer 1

I don't have access to the source code, so removing it at that level isn't an option at all. Instead modifying the shipped configuration is exactly what's on the table.
Just to clear confusion, I'm not the AUR maintainer, this was 1. so I know what to suggest to the maintainer and 2. To know for the next time this happens. I have written a PKGBUILD which applies this patch and it's here: https://github.com/sakaru/PKGBUILD/blob … y/PKGBUILD
The build() function is:
build() {
# Patch the default Preferences package to disable update notifications
cd "${srcdir}/sublime_text_3/Packages"
unzip Default.sublime-package Preferences.sublime-settings
patch Preferences.sublime-settings < "${srcdir}/disable-update-notifications.patch"
zip Default.sublime-package Preferences.sublime-settings
rm Preferences.sublime-settings
tomk wrote:I'd just use a post-install message advising users that they should disable the update check themselves.
Perhaps that's the best option
Last edited by SidK (2013-03-18 14:38:50)