--devel doesn't appear to do anything

[a-m-s]

I tried this:

packer -Suy --auronly --devel

Which the --help documentation suggests would update all my *-git packages, but nothing happens.

The only way I can find to update VCS packages, where the maintainer has not bumped the pkgver, is to list them individually, by name.

[gavinhungry]

This is because packer only looks for variables being defined in the PKGBUILD properties _gitroot, _svntrunk, etc. For Git packages at least, makepkg can understand git in a source property, so _gitroot is no longer required, and packer doesn't see it as a Git package anymore.

I've fixed this in my packer fork:
gavinhungry/packer@544f163

In addition to checking for _gitroot, all packages with names that end in -git (a convention only, but one that is followed well and possibly even enforced) are included with --devel.