[LAU] [ANN] Announcing the Unofficial Pro-Audio Arch Package Repository (Beta Phase)

[Christopher Arndt]

# Announcing the Unofficial Pro-Audio Arch Package Repository
    (Beta Phase)

## Where?

<https://arch.osamc.de/>


## What?

An actively maintained binary package repo for Arch Linux of free and
open source pro-audio software.

The repository only provides packages that are not already in the
official Arch Linux repository.

The repository is maintained and tested for both x86_64 and aarch64
(Arch Linux ARM) architectures.


## Why?

1. We are convinced that Arch Linux is currently the best free platform
     for audio production and we want to help improving it further.
2. Having more up-to-date and easy to install packages of useful audio
     production software is always a good thing.
3. The pro-audio packages in the `extra` and `community` package
     repositories are currently maintained by only one person. We want to
     distribute the workload and spread the packing expertise between
     more people and decrease the "bus-factor".
4. We want to create packages, which can eventually be migrated to the
     official repositories with no or minimal changes. We do not intend
     to duplicate the packaging efforts from the official repos.


## How?

See the web site for instructions on how to add the repository to your
Arch System (or derivatives). The repository is also listed on the
[Unofficial user repositories] page on the Arch Wiki.

We are still stabilizing the build process and packaging conventions.
While this is going on, we consider the repository to be in a *Beta
quality stage*. We currently have around two dozen projects packaged and
ready to install and plan to add many more over time.

We try to announce important changes on IRC (`#archlinux-proaudio` on
`irc.libera.chat`) and always keep the information on the Arch Wiki page
up to date.

**Note:** *Our build process is currently not based on the official Arch
Linux `devtools`, but we adhere strictly to the Arch Packaging 
guidelines and test all package builds via our CI. With the Arch
Packaging infrastructure expected to evolve significantly in the near
future, we plan to adapt our tooling to whatever the outcome of that
will be.


## Contributing

Contributions are welcome! To suggest software for inclusion in the repo
open a GitHub issue.


### PKGBUILD and CI Code Repository and Issue Tracker:

https://github.com/osam-cologne/archlinux-proaudio


### Team-Chat

Discussion and coordination of the project happens on the Sonoj Rocket
Chat instance. If you are interested in helping out or have questions or
suggestions, join the general chat room (no registration required,
English):

<https://chat.sonoj.org/channel/english>


[Unofficial user repositories]: 
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unofficial_user_repositories#proaudio