Joachim Breitner wrote: > Well, this would requre most packages to be changed anyway, so why not > do the same thing with the package description? This would be much > easier for the packages.d.o programmers, you could check for a url with > apt-cache show and, eh. that's it. Making things easier for packages.debian.org is not the main criterion here. (Though it'd be fine if we adopt some more regularized thing like Manoj proposed, to make their job easier.) The purpose of a package description is to tell you what a package is, so you can decide if you want to install it (or remove or whatever). The only reason I can see for putting an URL in a package description would be if the package description is not sufficiently good to describe the package. In that case, the description should be fixed instead of linking to a web site that may not be available. Sometimes, it might make sense to put in an url linking to something like a screenshot, but that need should be rare, and such a link wouldn't go directly to the home page of the software, so it has a different purpose and content. Otherwise an URL in a package description is just extraneous text that distracts from the real purpose of the package description. Users want urls so they can check out a package's web site, to perhaps check on new versions, find mailing lists, find extra documentation, whatever; keeping the URL in the copyright file or some other file installed as part of the package should be sufficient for this; it's doubtful that any of these activities will interest you until after you have a package installed. -- see shy jo
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