DOAP files
Hi developers,
While I'm packaging morla[1], I've found in the tarball tree a little XML file
named "doap.rdf", which turned out to be a DOAP[2][3] file. An apt-file query
(on 'sid', i386) showed me that there are at least three packages which
install such files:
flumotion: usr/share/doc/flumotion/flumotion.doap.gz
mach: usr/share/doc/mach/mach.doap.gz
python-gst0.10: usr/share/doc/python-gst0.10/gst-python.doap
I haven't be found any quick way to search the Debian source archive for file
names, but Google Code Search provided[4] me with a rough estimate of how
many DOAP files are around there, in tarballs and VCSs. There are several
dozens; what's most noteworthy, some of them belong to non-aforementioned
softwares included in Debian. Sadly enough, they appear to have very loose
conventions about naming (with respect to contents, at least a validator[5]
exists, although currently only for any «pure DOAP, not DOAP in an RDF
container»).
Now, DOAP is of course an interesting thing from the semantic web. The Apache
Software Foundation supports[6] it. An ITP bug[7] has been filed for moap[8],
a project maintenance tool using DOAP files. There are DOAP generators[9],
maybe some converters, and so on. Info in these files are kind of like those
which one may find on e.g. Freshmeat about projects. doapspace.org[10]
collects DOAP entries, mostly generated from Sourceforge updates...
So, I don't know how these files might be useful (as sources for information
on upstream projects, I guess). Anyway, I have some questions I'd like to see
answered, so I may do a better job (as a prospective maintainer).
1) Should we include DOAP files from upstream in packages? (always?)
2) If so, where? (usr/share/doc sounds OK if they are only provided for sake
of completeness, while IMVHO if we want them to be globally parsed and/or
indexed it would be good to have an ad-hoc hierarchy under e.g.
usr/share/doap)
3) (related to the above question) Should they have uniform names? If so, in
what form? Should we distinguish between pure DOAP and «DOAP in an RDF
container»?
I know you will enlighten me. :-) Thanks.
[1] http://www.morlardf.net
[2] http://usefulinc.com/doap/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOAP
[4]
http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=file%3A%28doap.rdf%7Cdoap.xml%7Cdoap%24%29
[5] http://doapspace.org/validate_form
[6] http://projects.apache.org/doap.html
[7] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=422660
[8] https://thomas.apestaart.org/moap/trac
[9] http://crschmidt.net/semweb/doapamatic/
[10] http://doapspace.org
Regards,
--
Luca
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