Re: Bug#652423: Acknowledgement (ITP: v3c -- C/C++/sh/make/automake/Debian utility toolkit)

[Philip Ashmore <contact@philipashmore.com>]

On 18/12/11 08:35, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach Philip Ashmore<contact@philipashmore.com>  [2011.12.18.0834 +0100]:
> > If no one has any more issues with the new long description then
> > I'll assume all is well.
>
> Hello Philip,
>
> a long description is neither a text of marketing, nor should it be
> a complete list of features. The former can go on a website, the
> latter should be found in a README file.
>
> The long description should preemptively provide a user with enough
> information so that s/he can make a choice. It should be written
> with complete sentences in free text, with an informative, objective
> style.
>
> A rough guidelines of questions to be answered across three
> paragraphs could be:
>
>    1. What is the general purpose of the software in this package, or
>       the collection of software that this package belongs to?
>
>    2. What distinguishes this software from other software? For what
>       use cases was the software designed?
>
>    3. How does this package fit in into a collection (unless it's
>       a single package)? Are there any other noteworthy things that
>       the user might need to know to decide for or against a piece of
>       software?
Being too familiar with a package sometimes has it's drawbacks.
Here's my revised long description, based on your feedback - thanks!

 v3c is a wrapper package that provides a standard means of interacting with
 packages by providing "boilerplate" code, programs and scripts, and allowing
 you to manipulate a package through "make" targets, such as
 .
 make check
 make dist
 make distcheck
 make git branch=1.3.5 release debian
 make install
 make distclean
 .
 Among its capabilities are doxygen documentation integration, Git version
 control integration, configurable build modes (for debug and release builds,
 for example), and the ability to specify most configurable options in the
 top-level makefile.
 It also provides a C++ class library for use in client projects.
 Run "make check" to see test/example C++ programs that use it.
 .
 See treedb, meta-treedb, v3c-dcom and v3c-qt as examples of projects that use
 the v3c build framework.

Regards,
Philip Ashmore