Re: Debian Menu transition status
On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Bill Allombert wrote:
> Others changes:
> ===============
>
> -- Menu support a new format called "menu-2" since 8 years.
Uhmmm, this is one of the strangest sentences I read on this list this
year. At which time scale you would regard eight years old as new (at
least in the world of computers)? I would rather pronounce:
The menu format that is currently used by nearly every package
was obsolated by the menu-2 format two years ago because the
information about was so perfectly hidden that nobody really
noticed.
I base my assumption that nobody really noticed on the fact that
grep "menu-2" /usr/share/menu/*
revealed no result on my machine.
> In this
> format lines break are not significant, but logical lines end by a
> semi-comma:
>
> This is an example:
>
> !C menu-2
> ?package(pari-gp):
> section="Applications/Science/Mathematics"
> needs="text"
> title="PARI/GP"
> command="gp"
> ;
>
> I do not have strong opinion about this format, but feel free to use it.
Well, the strongest prove that you are not alone is that neither
debian-policy mentions it (see #447389), nor dh-make creates menu-2
templates (see #447390) nor lintian suggests this format (see #447391).
But how should we interpret the sentence below:
> Since even potato support menu-2, there are no upgrade or backport
> issue, however this might break the lintian code to parse menu file.
>
> menu-2 is also available for menu-methods, through the definition
> compat="menu-2". I highly recommend its use for menu-methods.
So you highly recommend something you have no feelings about?
What is the sense of inventing a format and not providing any
information about it. Even grepping through /usr/share/doc/menu/html
revealed only some notes amout menu-2 but no code example locked
like above. The manual claims to describe menu format menu-2
but considering that the code uses backspace '\' which should be
necessary according to the information above and given that the
line "!C menu-2" is mandatory as well as the final semicolon
in contrast to the statement of /usr/share/doc/menu/html/ch1.html
that this document describes the menu-2.0 format this is just
not the case (and I should probably a file against the menu
package about this).
So how could you expect developers to adopt a new format if there
is no information about it?
> Imagine a large red swirl here.
I have to admit that my brain turned in a multi colored huge
swirl when I finaly was pointed to this information which was
hidden in the very end of a long mail that was posted to
debian-devel-announce (but got archived on debian-devel strangely
enough).
After settling down with this I wonder whether you could easily
turn a menu-1 format file into a menu-2 format file by just
wrapping it i between
!C menu-2
<contents of old file>
;
or is there some other magic?
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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