Searching for and Creating New Packages -- READ THIS FIRST

Question

This is here simply for historical reasons nowadays, to serve as a reminder to all why the AUR is such a great thing. The original text follows:
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It has occurred to me that there is alot of reinventing the wheel going on around here. There are copies of virtually the same PKGBUILD made by three or four different people that failed to check if it already existed floating around.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR FINDING OUT IF A PACKAGE ALREADY EXISTS:
1. Check to see if it's in an official repo: http://www.archlinux.org/packages.php (or use pacman -Ss pkgname)
2.. Check to see if it's in an unofficial repo or tur: http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … positories and http://xentac.net/~tur/repos.php
3. Check if it has been posted in this forum before: http://bbs.archlinux.org/search.php in that dialogue, I suggest that you select  "New and Requested Packages" from the Forum: menu, this way you get only the results you're interested in.
4. Check in incoming (soon to be deprecated, and already a mess, but you may just find it there...) ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/incoming
5. If you didn't find it in any of these places, then it has more than likely not been packaged before, and you can go ahead and follow the instructions at http://archlinux.org/docs/en/guide/inst … e.html#abs to package it, then share it on the forums.
Thank you for your cooperation, and happy packaging!

Answer 1

There has been some confusion going around when contributing packages. A lot of changes are going on now with the new TUR system, the AUR. The new AUR will have a nice systematic way of submitting packages. But currently, there are two ways to submit packages.
1) Post a PKGBUILD and build scripts of the New and Requested Packages category of the forum. TURs and developers will look through these PKGBUILDs and pick up any that look interesting to them, and put them in a repository.
2) Send a PKGBUILD to the tur-mailing list (http://www.archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/tur-users/). All the TURs will definately see your PKGBUILD if you post it on the mailing list. Many TURs prefer new packages on the list, because they will definately see it. Some TURs don't look at the forum as much as others.
To be on the safe side, you can do both.
Here are some dont's:
1) DONT submit packages to incoming. No one looks at incoming. Incoming is dead. Incoming is from the old package submittal submission system, which is now being replaced with the AUR.
2) DONT submit packages without PKGBUILD scripts. No one wants a package from an untrusted source that could contain malicious code.
3) DONT forget to include all files in your submission: .install files, PKGBUILDs, startup scripts, etc.
4) DONT put patchfiles up on the forum: the forum will mess up the formatting of the patch. Upload the patch somewhere and post a link.
5) DONT use namcap as your only resource for dependencies. Check ./configure --help, README, INSTALL, and the website of the program. Namcap is a guide, don't use it as truth.
6) DONT use the license field yet. A standard hasn't been decided of what to put there yet, so don't use it yet.
7) DONT add a maintainer comment to your PKGBUILD unless you have a repository and you maintain it. Put a contributor comment instead.
There we go: If everyone reads these, that will cut down on 90% of the submissions we have to fix    :twisted:  :evil: