Arch Linux User Repository

eugene: Debian lists stterm or x-terminal-emulator and suckless-tools as "Recommends" (a strong, but not absolute, dependency), but not as "Depends" (an absolute dependency): https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#binary-dependencies-depends-recommends-suggests-enhances-pre-depends

I agree with this. That's why I'm suggesting to make them "optional dependencies" in Arch.

But that's different than required dependencies.

ilf0: st and dmenu provide basic functionality for the dwm such as ability to start apps. And in fact only these programs registered as commands (lines 59-60) of config.h as opposed to window names in Rules configuration, which in default config acts as an example.
So I would suggest to bring back at least st as a dependency as without ability to interactively start other programs any desktop manager does not make any sense.
As an example, you can look at how Debian guys dealt with the issue:
https://salsa.debian.org/hle/dwm/-/tree/master/debian/patches contains 2001_replace_term_cmd.patch which replaces st with virtual package x-terminal-emulator. And x-terminal-emulator is recommended alongside st as terminal application, needed for dwm's basic functionality (https://packages.debian.org/buster/dwm).
As you can see, other suckless utilities are recommended there as well.

eugene: There is a definition for dependency: "packages that must be installed for the software to build and run" https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Optional_dependency#depends

Similar, for optional dependencies: "packages that are not needed for the software to function, but provide additional features" https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Optional_dependency#optdepends

st and dmenu are not required for dwm to build and run.

The config.def.h also include Gimp and Firefox: https://git.suckless.org/dwm/file/config.def.h.html#l24

According to your argument, these should also be dependencies.

I disagree. So do the Arch rules.

I strongly disagree with @ilf0 and Maintainer on dependencies reduction. Both st and dmenu are hard dependencies as they mentioned in config.h

I agree with the change. st and dmenu are not dependencies, defined as required to build and run dwm. They could be optional dependencies, defined as not needed to run the package.

Hmmm, I'm not really happy with the dependency changes. The default config.h has st and dmenu included, so they are in fact dependencies. If you customize the config.h (which you should definitely do) you can customize the PKGBUILD aswell. But if you just install it the way it's provided, those two dependencies are missing.

Updated.

I also see now that the current listed maintainer, Sebastian209, has

Last Login:     2022-03-21 (UTC)

So if nobody confirms any response from the other emails, a request for "disown" should be made.

Well it's now 2 months since this (super important) PKGBUILD hasnt been updated.

@ilf0

"The email account that you tried to reach does not exist."

I'm asssuming that you are talking about the emails listed in the PKGBUILD

# Maintainer: Sergej Pupykin <pupykin.s+arch@gmail.com>
# Contributor: Dag Odenhall <dag.odenhall@gmail.com>
# Contributor: Grigorios Bouzakis <grbzks@gmail.com>

And that you tried to contact them by email. Am I correct ?

But it doesnt seem that the maintainer

Sebastian209

is listed there. It should, but it is not there. And he has set his email to invisible.

If there is no response, then a request should be made to disown this PKGBUILD.

So that someone that can take good care of it can adopt it.

Is anyone else interested in maintaining this PKGBUILD ?