Re: DEP 12: Per-package machine-readable metadata about Upstream
Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org> writes:
> On Thu, Jan 03, 2013 at 04:57:56PM +0100, Guillem Jover wrote:
>> option. The first fields that come to mind could be Homepage,
>> Maintainer and Description (and for the latter this has already happened
>> somewhat). But then this does not require a split in the source format,
>> but only in the archive indices, and possibly in the package managers
>> frontends.
> I'll throw in a few more data points.
> Other such existing fields that come to mind are Tags, and Vcs-*
> Possible new fields that haven't been introduced so far are: Popcon,
> Rating, upstream BTS type and URL, extra keywords for full text search
> indexing, date+time the package has first entered the archive, and/or
> the release; datetime that version of the package has been
> built/uploaded.
Upstream VCS is another frequently-requested field that we've held off
from adding largely due to the metadata bloat.
Of course, the other issue that this DEP raises is how much sense it makes
to put all this stuff in the source package, either in debian/control or
in a new file, given that most of these fields (even including Maintainer,
although moving that probably isn't a good idea) can change independent of
any functional change in the source package.
BTW, if we're going to create a new file to hold (in part) upstream
information, it would be really nice if it could replace debian/watch, and
in the long run it would be nice if it would take over some of the
metadata requirements of debian/copyright (all the stuff that isn't actual
legal notices, basically). We currently have that information spread
across multiple files; if we're going to go to the work of introducing a
new file, I think we should get consolidation for our trouble.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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