Re: status of packages
Le Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 07:48:21PM +0200, Thorsten Alteholz a écrit :
>
> I just found out that package abyss is currently not maintained
> within Debian Med but still in the svn repository. As there are
> currently several methods to mark packages no longer within svn
> (MOVED, README_git, now_managed_via_git,
> REMOVED_FROM_DEBIAN.readme), I would like to restart a previous
> discussion and propose a machine readable README.status file.
> It should contain at least a Status:- and a Comment:-line. In case
> of an abandoned package there might be also a Reason:- and maybe an
> URL:-line. If the package is finally deleted from svn, a Revision:
> might be added.
>
> For now the following values come into my mind:
> Status: abandoned <- no longer maintained in svn repository
> Reason: external <- external maintainer
> Reason: git <- package is now in git repository
> URL: xxx <- new URL for that package
> Reason: removed <- package removed from Debian
> Status: active <- this package is maintained in svn
> Revision: 1234 <- Revision of svn delete command (in case someone
> want to have a look at this old stuff)
> Comment: xxxx <- lots of interesting stuff about the package,
> this should be the last entry
Hi Thorsten,
this is a very good idea. I sometimes use a debian/DRAFT file in the draft
packages I upload, but would be happy to use debian/README.status instead.
Here are a couple of suggestions.
- Use YAML as a syntax. There are parsers for many languages, that are very
easy to use.
- Do not require fields to be in a particular order, as it is not the case
in Debian control files, YAML, email headers, or other pre-existing syntaxes
that could be used for README.status.
- I find the Status field redundant with the other fields.
For instance:
Status: moved
URL: git://somewhere.example.com/foo.git
Could be simplified in:
Moved: git://somewhere.example.com/foo.git
or:
Status: draft
Comment: feel free to take over and upload to NEW.
could be simplified in:
Draft: feel free to take over and upload to NEW.
Also, a Format field might be useful in case README.status has so much
success that a backwards-incompatible version 2.0 is needed to extend it :)
Perhaps you can have a look at my “UMEGAYA”, UPstream MEtadata GAthered with
YAml project, which I unfortunately neglected recently for expriments on the
Amazon computer cloud and DEP 5.
http://upstream-metadata.debian.net/
Cheers,
Charles
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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