Re: Description for debian/control ruby-subexec
tornow@riseup.net wrote:
> Description: Spawn a subprocess
This is a (capitalised) verb phrase; those are common in man pages,
but discouraged in package synopses. What you want is an
(uncapitalised, articleless) noun phrase along the lines of
Description: mechanism for spawning a subprocess
Or with some appropriate Ruby technical term in place of mechanism; or
for the simple approach, just:
Description: subprocess spawner
It doesn't need to say anything about being a Ruby library, since
that's supposed to be obvious from the package name.
> Subexec is a simple library that spawns an external command.
> It has an optional timeout parameter, which is useful for libraries
> which are wrappers for external command line programs
> and may never return control back to the original process.
That is, the *libraries* might never return control? Accidentally, in
a manner that this package can help to avoid? Oh, with the timeout,
yes. It seems intelligible enough... I might shuffle it about a bit,
though:
Subexec is a simple library that spawns an external command. It has an
optional timeout parameter, useful for libraries which are wrappers for
external command line programs and which may sometimes fail ever to
return control back to the original process.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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