Bug#473439: pick consistent terminology for category/component/area

["Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@debian.org>]

Russ Allbery wrote:
> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
>
> > I did a bit more research based on Osamu Aoki's excellent work.
> > Currently, these things are referred to using three different terms:
> >
> > * dak calls them components.
> > * The current Debian Policy document calls them categories.
> > * The Social Contract calls them areas:
(...)

> The above was written in July of last year.  The only reaction that I got
> to this proposal is a comment from Giacomo that didn't object but
> suggested standardizing more of the terminology while we're at it.  But I
> don't think there's been much progress on that front.
>
> As mentioned, I'm not sure we need to match the terminology in dak as long
> as we're not confusing about it.  dak is referring to technical
> capabilities which are used to implement certain features.  I still think
> distribution area is a good name for this, better than categories.
>
> However, there doesn't appear to be any consensus on this right now.  So
> this is a ping to see if we do have consensus and people just haven't
> said, or if we don't.  If we don't have consensus, my inclination is to
> close this bug and continue using categories, since I don't think anything
> else uses category in a confusing way.  I don't want to just leave the bug
> open; it doesn't seem likely that anything fundamental is going to change
> about this bug report in the future.

During last DebConf, I've done some further research, but unfortunately
I paused it (and I forgot about it).

I think that dak is inconsistent with the meaning of "component".
I see component and distribution area as two different entities:
component is build from distribution area and eventually prepended with
some name (source, distributuion), e.g. the security "sub-distribution" have
as components (e.g. in http://security.debian.org/dists/etch/updates/Release ) :

:  Components: updates/main updates/contrib updates/non-free

OTOH, sometime we uses (sources.list(5)):

:  deb uri distribution [component1] [component2] [...]

but in this case "updates" is attached to "distribution", thus
here "componentN" should be really "areaN".

So I agree we your patch, with only one remark:


> Here's the proposed patch:
>
> > diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml
> > index 24c9072..16919b2 100644
> > --- a/policy.sgml
> > +++ b/policy.sgml
> > @@ -293,7 +293,13 @@
> >  	<em>free</em> in our sense (see the Debian Free Software
> >  	Guidelines, below), or may be imported/exported without
> >  	restrictions. Thus, the archive is split into the distribution
> > -	areas or categories based on their licenses and other restrictions.
> > +	areas or components<footnote>
> > +	  The Debian archive software uses the term "component" internally
> > +	  and in the Release file format to refer to the division of an
> > +	  archive.  The Debian Social Contract refers to distribution
> > +	  areas.  This document uses the same terminology as the Social
> > +	  Contract.
> > +	</footnote> based on their licenses and other restrictions.
> >        </p>

I would replace with:

+	areas<footnote>
+	  The Debian archive software uses the term "component" internally
+	  and in the Release file format to refer to the division of an
+	  archive, which is usually the same as the distribution area.
+	</footnote> based on their licenses and other restrictions.

ciao
	cate