Suggestion: postmarketOS User Repository

I think postmarketOS needs something like the Arch User Repository.

That is, a blessed/sanctioned/official place where unofficial packages can live.

I'm going to take my recent experience in working on Plymouth integration (!4916 (closed)) for pmOS as an example, and extrapolate from there. So maybe my concerns and issues are off base and there's no actual problem to be solved here.

My experience was that I decided to try some exploratory implementation work to package up Plymouth as an alternate to the default pbsplash that pmOS ships with. Almost immediately upon embarking on this work, I was met with a pretty overwhelming amount of feedback/concerns from folks in the Matrix development room and in the MR itself.

The concerns ranged from:

• Why replace pbsplash?
• Plymouth is too big.
• Adding more bootsplash options increases maintenance burden.

These are all valid concerns, to be sure! The thing is, they're only valid with the current model of all pmOS packaging work taking place in pmaports. In this model, things that need to be rigorously tested across an enormous range of devices, are co-mingled with extremely WIP device packages and so on.

If pmOS had something like AUR, I would have first explored this Plymouth integration work in a quiet little AUR package. Once I had something functional, I could share a link to this repository with other interested folks, and they could pull that package down, build it themselves, and test.

The concerns about whether Plymouth is suitable to be packaged for all devices, and whether it'll fit, and what will happen to pbsplash, would still exist, but those conversations would not need to take place for a long time, if ever. Because Plymouth would just exist as something that interested people can pull down and play with.

I think something like AUR will be increasingly important for pmOS as it continues to expand in scope. If contributions from less involved or initiated people are met with a torrent of feedback ranging from "this is too big for my google-peach-pi!" to "this is too small for my valve-jupiter!" I think pmOS could risk losing out on a lot of valuable contributions.

A good example (IMO) is Xen on Arch Linux. It has been available for years in AUR. Now that it's matured and stabilized, it's making it's way into Arch [extra] (I guess [extra] is kinda analogous to community/ in pmaports).