Yay: Feature request: show AUR comments before install

[palb91]

Affected Version

$ yay -V
yay v6.786.r90.g1002a4f

Issue

I compare some AUR helpers since few days – since I don't know what is happening with yaourt – and I choose yay for some intersting features (reverse ordering when searching). One feature is missing that I appreciated in yaourt, the possibility to see AUR comments.

Some packages are broken, and sometimes a quick fix is provided in comments, that's really help…

I imagine a config parameter such as:

{ "aurcomments": true }

What do you think about that ?

palb91

[Jguer]

Seems somewhat out of scope for yay, news is already on the borderline but if a quickfix is available in the AUR wouldn't the first thing to do be going there and check, it's not that much of a time saver

[Morganamilo]

I think it fits in the the general theme of AUR helpers. Whether it's in Yay's scope or not is different. I saw this coming though. That's why I initially suggested using -W/--web for news.

[Jguer]

Depends, are the comments parseable or by XML? Because I think I saw it once implemented by page parsing and that's something I would like to avoid

[Morganamilo]

Nope pretty sure you have to parse the comments of the AUR page. Not that I've really looked into it.

[Jguer]

Zawinski's law at work I guess.

I'll try and look into it but although go offers great facilities in web parsing, I would really, really like to avoid turning yay into a web browser.

[palb91]

Hi,

That's why I initially suggested using -W/--web for news.

Yep, I spend few time in open/close issues searching for "comments" and similar word… I haven't found this one :/ Sorry for duplicate…
At least #384 provides a workaround for this.

Zawinski's law at work I guess.

Maybe, not sure where are the limits… I asked for that because yay is « based on the design of yaourt, apacman and pacaur » according to you presentation, and AUR comments was one of the reasons I used yaourt and never changed.

I understand your reluctance for what could imply this functionnality but eh… it doesn't hurt to ask :)

[sandwm]

I don't know the AurJson RPC interface, so I can't tell if that would do, but if web parsing would be necessary, pakku seems to implement it here in downloadAurComments. It's not too complicated, though I understand the reluctance to crawl the web instead of a well defined RPC interface.

When installing new AUR packages I usually go to their web page anyway, but when updating I like to see the (new) comments about the current version, so this feature would be very much appreciated. In case you decide not to implement it, I would like to know if pull requests for this feature would be accepted (although I can't promise if / when I would find the time).

In any case, thanks for your work! :)

[palb91]

Hi !
I spend few time on AUR helpers, it seems that all of them parse the HTML in order to get comments.
AurJson RPC interface does not provide comments, but it was a good idea @sandwm …

So if you @Jguer choose to not implement it, lets close this issue, and I will continue to use yay because indeed, you did a great job !

[Jguer]

Thinking about it, if we manage not to pull any external library for parsing. The structure is predictable, http is already pulled in the project, a simple parser can be written. It will just be hacky in the way that layout changes will break comment parsing.

@sandwm if you want to implement it, I would be willing to accept it, I think @Morganamilo would not object either

[sidhanthholalkere]

@sandwm are you still working on this? I can try to implement it if otherwise
Also @Jguer would I be able to use ioutil as well?

[Morganamilo]

You may just want to look at aur-talk. I've heard good things about it.

[sandwm]

@sidhanthholalkere no, I'm not working on it, but I would very much appreciate it if you would find the time.

[Zerophase]

It might be possible to pull out yaourts web parsing code for displaying aur comments. Might even be easier to implement now, as the aur now supports markup syntax. You only need the first x amount of comments to tell if there is a bigger issue to intervene manually, before breaking your system.

[fam4r]

I subscribe with that request.

Moreover IMHO the use-case of opening the (every) related AUR web page while updating a package is very uncomfortable.

I also want to contribute quoting @Morganamilo reference to aur-talk linking to the source code which can help who wants to implement that avoiding you the effort of searching stuff

This https://github.com/GermainZ/aur-talk/blob/master/aur_talk.py#L34 could be a good start

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.