Re: Worthless node-* package descriptions in ITPs
Quoting Riku Voipio (2017-01-05 12:53:16)
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 10:53:36AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
>> At present you are forcing that vast majority of our users, that have
>> no interest in this software, to individually learn that they need to
>> look out for the node- prefix, and ignore such packages.
Thanks, Philip, for raising this concern. I agree with it.
> Vast majority of users would only install this via dependencies. It's
> hardly a node-specific problem that debian package searches output
> large amount of packages that are not useful unless you happen to be a
> programmer.
...and I agree that the issue is not specific to node-* packages, but I
find it is quite common there. Quite likely due to recent inclusion of
lots of packages, prepared semi-automated - as Philip pointed out very
well.
> The only people installing node libs directly would be node
> developers, for whom matching description with upstream project is
> valuable. If the description is not useful for developer either ( for
> example "Itty bitty little widdle twinkie pinkie" ), better propose
> the upstream project a more concise description, than to carry extra
> delta in debian.
It seems you argue that package descriptions need not make sense beyond
the package section they belong to. I disagree, and it seems Debian
Policy disagrees too - see § 3.4:
> The description should describe the package (the program) to a user
> (system administrator) who has never met it before so that they have
> enough information to decide whether they want to install it. This
> description should not just be copied verbatim from the program's
> documentation.
- Jonas
--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
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