Bug#433469: PTS: please parse 'Homepage:' pseudo-header in the Descriptions...

[Adeodato Simó <dato@net.com.org.es>]

* Stefano Zacchiroli [Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:05:09 +0200]:

> But data should be primarily represented (warning:
> mantra begins here) where they belong to. And if the Homepage
> information belong, as I hope we all agree upon, to a source package
> then there it should be represented.

I don't disagree with this, but I have a different view on the issue:

> For the sake of usefulness than an information can be derived elsewhere
> where useful. The PTS web interface is an example of this: binary
> package pages on the web can have link to the PTS which collect together
> a lot of information and make them accessible to the user. If the user
> currently use "apt-cache show" for getting information about a package
> fine, if the homepage field should be shown there fine as well, but then
> its apt-cache show which should inherit the information (if possible)
> from the source record.

> Don't we already have examples of such inheritance? Aren't sections
> inherited from the source package and possibly overridden there?

> It is not the case that we should put an information where it is not
> appropriate only because the current user practice is to look there for
> the info. After all we are all looking for the proper place where to put
> this information and the Description is apparently agreed upon for not
> being such a place.

> For the reasoning above I'm convinced the Homepage information belong to
> the source record.

(1) The canonical place for the Homepage field, in other words the
origin, must be / is the source package. Hence it is kept in the
debian/control file of each source package. Not Sources.gz.

(2) The way to derived that information elsewhere, as deemed usefuil, is
to use the "S", "B", and "C" flags as appropriate in the header that
lives in debian/control. This seems more logical (let alone simple) to
me than changing apt, and the place where policy about what's useful is
decided is the same place where the information is originally kept, not
some other tool.

That's how I see it.

Cheers,

-- 
Adeodato Simó                                     dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer                                  adeodato at debian.org
 
                         Listening to: Michael Jackson - Don't walk away