Re: "Entry: NA" in debian/upstream/metadata

[Andrius Merkys <merkys@debian.org>]

Hi Andreas,

On 2021-03-03 10:36, Andreas Tille wrote:
> I wrote the UDD importer for the metadata files and thus look at the
> data as a "consumer" of the provided information.  From this side those
> different meanings of unknown are all turned into "ignore this value".
> So in this respect differentiating between those unknowns is basically
> helpful for those who edit the metadata files.  Flagging something as "I
> was here and have checked" is probably kind of helpful.  However, it
> might perfectly be that some registry will include that specific
> software later and re-checking makes sense.
> 
> For this reason I was recommending to not make those simple things to
> complex since making it complex just drains time from the people who are
> working on it with no visible effect to the users.
>  
>> If three flavors option would be preferred, I would also suggest adding
>> date fields for each entry to signal at which point in time the registry
>> was inspected.
> 
> As I wrote above later addition of some software to some registry can
> spoil the different meanings of unknown.  This could be cured by such a
> date field but I don't think it is of any better value than draining
> time from people maintaining that extra field.  Thus I do not think we
> should do this.

Thanks a lot for sharing your perspective. Personally, I am for keeping
the specification simple, but if certain conventions are helpful for
people maintaining the metadata, they surely should remain. However, all
such conventions should be described in DEP 12 to spare the confusion.

Best,
Andrius