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DEP 12: Per-package machine-readable metadata about Upstream



Dear all,

I am starting the Debian Enahncement Proposal (DEP) number 12 together with
Andreas Tille who kindly accepted to co-drive this work.

For general information about DEPs, please see http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep0/

The puropose of this proposal is to store in source packages some metadata
related to the usptream project, in a file called debian/upstream.  We are
currently using it in some Debian Pure Blends projects to feed some summary
pages with the bibliographic references of manuscripts describing the packaged
works.  See for instance Debian Med's "biology" task page.
http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/bio

I think that debian/upstream can be more broadly useful, and therefore propose
this DEP, to finalise the format and standardise the most frequent fields of
this file.

Your comments, suggestions or questions are all very welcome; please send them
to the debian-qa mailing list, where the discussion will take place.

Here is the full information about this DEP:

Title: Per-package machine-readable metadata about Upstream
DEP: 12
State: DRAFT
Date: 2013-01-03
Drivers: Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>, Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org>
URL: http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep12
Source: http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/dep/web/deps/dep12.mdwn
Abstract:
 The source package control files and some of their derivatives are currently
 used to document the URL of the home page of the work that is packaged
 ("upstream").  However, this approach is hard to extend to other information
 describing upstream, because the size of the control files has to be limited
 according to the limited power of some systems running Debian.
 .
 We propose a new file in the source packages, debian/upstream, formatted
 in YAML to hold arbitrary information about upstream, for instance the
 URL to a donation page, bibliographic information about publications
 describing the upstream work, the URL to the upstream sources, etc. 
 .
 The scope of this DEP is the format of the debian/upstream file, and the
 specification of the most frequent fields.  The flow of information from the
 source packages to data providers such as the UDD are is specified here.
 Please refer to http://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamMetadata for more information
 on that subject.
 .
 Discussion takes place on the debian-qa mailing list.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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