Re: RFC: Additional metadata in Debian archives (DEP-11)
Hi!
2011/10/13 Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org>:
>> [...]
>> Title: AppStream and Component Metadata for Debian
>> DEP: 11
>> URL: http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal
>> Drivers: Matthias Klumpp <matthias@tenstral.net>,
>> Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org>,
>> Michael Vogt <mvo@debian.org>
>> Abstract:
>> Proposal for an additional file in Debian repositories containing
>> information about components packages provide as well as
>> all data required for the cross-distro application manager
>> project AppStream[1].
>
> I would like to point out that some of this stuff is already placed in
> the Packages files. For example gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg has the custom
> Gstreamer-Decoders header containing a list of codecs this package
> supports.
>
> I would like to point out this project:
>
> http://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamMetadata
>
> And strongly suggest that you make your proposal much more general and
> as such able to handle arbitrary upstream metadata, either manually
> added to debian/control by the Debian package maintainer (like
> UpstreamMetadata) or automatically added to debian/foo/DEBIAN/control
> during the build process by automatic tools (presumably as in your
> proposal).
Yes - this was already planned. The only problem at time is that the
"components" data should be distro-agnostic, so if someone requests
the package providing Plasma-Dataengine with name "XYZ" on Debian, it
should also get an usable result on Fedora etc. with that string.
Also, it would be a bit bad to let maintainers define everything they
want, so maybe we should just allow some custom fields like
"DEP11-UpstreamBugtracker".
The UpstreamMetadata approach looks very nice, but it is about general
upstream info. This is not required dor the components part of DEP-11,
but for the application-related part this information will be
extremely valuable.
So maybe we should really add it.
There was also a proposal to use RDF as the format for DEP-11. If we
add much more metadata, an extensible and standardized format like RDF
would be better, IMO. (If ftpmasters allow it)
> I would also like to see the Packages files split up based on audience:
>
> dpkg: package names and relationships
> apt: package download information
> all users: description, homepage etc
> desktop users: freedesktop application info, fontconfig (languages
> etc), gstreamer (codec information), mime types, usb ids, pci ids,
> network protocols
> ...
I'd like that, but I don't think this will happen very soon - this
would require a major restructuring of Debian archives, and
incompatible changes, while DEP-11 is just an optional and less
invasive extension :)
Bye,
Matthias
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