Bug#3013: elvis is too granular and has short description
Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk> said:
> I seem to be missing your answer and my reply, which I think I sent,
> but can't find in the bug system. Perhaps I'm mistaken. I hope you
> won't mind if I reopen the bug report.
[...]
> > elviscmn -- common files needed by elvisx11 and/or elvisnox
> > elvisx11 -- elvis with an X11 gui interface, needs libX11
> > elvisnox -- elvis without X11 gui interface, doesn't need libX11
> > elvisctags -- ctags from the elvis source package, should be separate
> >
> > Is there a clean way of getting the common-files treatment without
> > needing a separate elviscmn package? If so, where is this documented
> > in the dpkg usage docs? ;-]
>
> I think I asked, and am fairly sure I haven't had an answer to:
>
> Why do you need all this lot of granularity ? Can't we just have the
> elvisx11 package depend on elvisnox, and do away with the elviscmn
> package entirely ? Come to think of it, are these binaries at all
> large, and if so why do we need them in separate packages ?
I think it'd be silly to say that the X11 version of the editor
depended on having the non-X11 version of the editor installed.
As for executable size:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 228957 Apr 28 10:45 /usr/bin/elvisnox
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 255471 Apr 28 10:44 /usr/bin/elvisx11
I also think it'd be silly to only provide the X11 version, which
currently depends on X11R6 and elf-x11r6lib.
> Don't we want to phase elvisctags out - isn't one ctags program enough
> for the project ?
Sounds like a good idea to me. Which ctags package do you nominate?
> > >Secondly, the descriptions of the packages are too short: there are no
> > >extended descriptions.
> >
> > All the packages except elviscmn have extended descriptions.
> > The summary description in elviscmn says all that there is to say.
> > Should I repeat it more verbosely in an extended description?
>
> I think I replied:
>
> Yes, you should repeat it. Remember that the description for the
> other elvis packages may not be available at the time.
As it happens, I was browsing with dselect yesterday and I noticed a
number of packages without extended descriptions: base, bash, chfn,
fdflush, fileutils, findutils, grep, gzip, hostname, image, sed,
setserial, shellutils, syslinux, tar, textutils, timezone, news,
open, vlock, manpages, mailx, nvi, pine, libc5, libdb1, bin86,
gbinutils, electric-fence, gdb, ..... I'm confused regarding why
elviscmn should repeat the summary description information in the
extended description field when all these other packages do not.
However, the next time I update the elvis-2.0 packages I'll add an
extended description to elviscmn which mentions that exvisx11 and
elvisnox are vi clones.
I'm closing this bug report again.
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