package metadata in general
This discussion has migrated a bit.
I think it *would* be good to have more structure in debian/copyright
files (e.g., /usr/share/doc/pkg/copyright). What here could be
structured? Well:
- where source came from
- what kind of license is it (we'd define the set of common licenses,
e.g., MIT, BSD, GPL, LGPL, MLP, etc.)
The question is, yes, maintainers already provide this
information. But what purpose will we put the data to if we had it
available? Is it for users or developers? What tools will know about
the structure and make use of it?
If we can't think of any good uses for this data, we shouldn't bother
structuring it.
... Moving on to the more general issue ...
Some users (including me) are also asking for more package metainfo:
upstream homepage, upstream bts, CVS area if any, it goes on and on
(noone's even mentioned "keywords"). Again, the same questions need
to be asked. What are the benefits? For who? Is there a way we can
get the data in control.tar.gz but not the Packages file so we don't
bloat it? How can this be implemented so maintainers can maintain the
info w/o too much work?
The homepage field I think we decided is generally useful for users,
e.g., "Hmm, this pkg looks interesting from it's description, where
can I get more info about it"? I think we agreed this would be a good
field to have in control.tar.gz and displayed on packages.debian.org
at least (and GUI pkg installers too, I would hope). I think it might
be worthwhile to have it in 'Packages' -- or it might not, I'm not
sure...
So -- the onus is really on the proposers of these new fields to
justify they are need and for whom and how it ought to be done.
--
...Adam Di Carlo..<adam@onshore-devel.com>...<URL:http://www.onshored.com/>
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