Would you be upset if all Linux distro support except Arch was removed?

[nickjj]

I'm not 100% sold on the decision yet but since I've switched to Arch Linux, I'm not sure if it's worth maintaining Debian / Ubuntu support as well as other distros if you bring your own packages. macOS support will continue because I use it on a work laptop.

Non-Arch support doesn't add a ton of complexity to the project but it adds a bit here and there and also requires extra testing.

I'm kind of curious how people are using these dotfiles and for which Linux distros.

[BigIUFan]

I'm, for all intents and purposes, married to Arch OR one of the Arch-based distros. I'm planning to remain on CachyOS, but have previously run Arcolinux (RIP), Garuda, and long ago Manjaro. Your scripts should work just fine on all these distros, but your pkg script for instance will fail because you're looking for just a match on "arch".

Unfortunately CachyOS modifies /etc/os-release and removes any reference to Arch. It might be too much work to track the various Arch-based distros available, but you could change your check logic to look for the presence of pacman. That should be an accurate check AND keep you from needing to track the multitude of distros.

Just my thoughts.

[BigIUFan]

Of course I guess I could always modify the relevant script and change the test from "arch" to "cachyos", but I'm thinking it would be a nice logic change to be more "flexible".

[nickjj]

Thanks.

I know CachyOS is based on Arch but is it guaranteed any package in Arch's repo list will be available in the same way as vanilla Arch? Same versions and everything?

Can you show me the full exact output of cat /etc/os-release on CachyOS? If it identifies with ID_LIKE=arch then it should be easy to adjust things to support it. I'm currently using this strategy to support Debian and Ubuntu. If it doesn't have ID_LIKE=arch, I wonder what caused them to remove it while still being based on Arch.

Edit:

For reference the code already has OS_DISTRO="$(. /etc/os-release && echo "${ID_LIKE:-${ID}}")" which looks for ID_LIKE before trying ID. I guess it's not included For CachyOS, I wonder about the others.

[nickjj]

I looked around and saw https://github.com/CachyOS/cachyos-hooks/blob/master/cachyos-branding#L16 which was referenced in CachyOS/distribution#177.

Looks like it has been set for a while. Are you using an older version of CachyOS or maybe a hook failed to run?

[BigIUFan]

I'll check, but as for a version, this is a fresh install. It's pretty hard given that it's a rolling release to be on an "old" version. I need to fully review the link you provided.

Yes, CachyOS is an opinionated distro so it will have its own list of packages. It also defaults to installing from its repos first. However, it generally steers clear of core and only shows up in place of extra or AUR packages. I'm not worried that treating it as vanilla Arch will cause me problems.

I hope that makes sense.

[nickjj]

Right, I'm wondering if a quick fix is to whitelist what CachyOS identifies as because it might capture a decent portion of Arch users (vanilla Arch + CachyOS).