Re: Homepage-field in description
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Eddy Petrişor wrote:
> On 6/15/06, Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> wrote:
> >if someone wanting to NMU is incapable of examining the copyright
> >file to find the location of upstream, they shouldn't be making an
> >NMU.
>
> That is a point, but still the users might find the link useful.
> Also, checking if something fresher is present is in upstream could
> be facilitated because there is no need to look for the copyright
> file and ge the info from there.
This problem is solved by watch files and similar, not the copyright
file or any other field in control.
> If the info is present in the copyright file, why isn't it parsed
> automaticaly to be displayed on the package page?
It's available in the copyright file which is linked there; feel free
to write a parser to pull it out of the free form copyright field...
it shouldn't be too difficult to get the majority of upstream pages
that way.
> Still I don't understand why is this reservation towards providing a
> Homepage link (even if via a new Homepage field in the control
> file)?!
If a maintainer has a problem with including it, then perhaps they
know best? If it makes sense, maintainers will include it. If not,
they won't.
> >As far as keeping a repository of package names and their upstream
> >locations with screenshots, that's really something that freshmeat is
> >good at, not something that packages.debian.org does well currently.
>
> Exactly, that's why Debian shoudl link to the upstream. Think from a
> user POV, not from a Debian maintainer's view.
We may want to link to upstream, but it's possible that the extra
information that you're asking for has no place in the control file
which serves a totally separate purpose.
I don't know who is working on packages.debian.org right now, but
there's nothing stoping you from expanding the codebase to allow user
contributions of links and screenshots that are kept with the packages
(or even just linking directly to the proper freshmeat.net package
page.)
Just check out the codebase and do it; blocking on maintainers to see
things your way when it isn't necessary to acomplish the things that
you want to do is just a path to frustration of everyone involved.
Don Armstrong
--
We were at a chinese resturant.
He was yelling at the waitress because there was a typo in his fortune
cookie.
-- hugh macleod http://www.gapingvoid.com/batch31.php
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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