Re: [devel-ref] author/homepage in description

[Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

Hello,

There is something I believe should be done anyway:
split the Packages file in Packages and Descriptions files as follows:


Remove the extended description from the Packages and put them
in a separated Descriptions file. 

(for clarity I have named Packages1 the Packages before removing
description and Packages2 after the removal. In practice Packages2 should
be named Packages, of course)

Benefit:
1) People running sid could update theirs Descriptions files
much less frequently that the Packages2 files, saving badwidth.

2) People with modem have much less mandatory data to download.

3) People using the translated descriptions are no more required
to download the english version.

Implementation:
There is several way to implement that with keeping full backward
compatibility.

1) Add dummy long description to the Packages2 files so that it is
a valid old-fashioned Packages1 file.

2.0) patch apt-get to rebuild the Packages1 from the Descriptions and 
Packages2 files.

2.1) or fix all the programs that need the extended descriptions,
much harder.

We can use the short description as a dummy long description, or 
use md5sum so that we can detect when the description in 
Descriptions is not up to date.

Once this is in place, we can start adding custom field to
Descriptions without bloating the Packages files.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>