On Thu, Jul 07, 2011 at 12:00:38PM +0200, Niels Thykier wrote:
> Yesterday in #debian-qa, I chatted with Paul Wise and the idea came up
> that Lintian should be a framework that others could use as a basis for
> their own analysis - particularly when these analysis would conflict
> with some of the Lintian design goals (namely we try to be independent
> of the system state).
Thanks for sharing this with other lists.
I don't know the current (internal) APIs you mention, but I feel like
sharing a use case that might benefit from the framework refactoring you
propose. It's a use case I've encountered while setting up two things at
once (none of which is finished yet...):
- the reborn of a sources.debian.org service (sort of browsable /
highlighted/ searchable Debian sources at your fingertips on the web)
- Coccinelle [1] runs on the whole of Debian sources, meant to be
integrated with DACA [2]
[1] http://coccinelle.lip6.fr/
[2] http://qa.debian.org/daca/
To achieve the above two goals, I need to keep in sync a Debian (source)
mirror with a place where I've all sources unpacked in versioned
directories. Additions/removals to the mirror should be reflected to the
unpacked source storage. I'd also like to be flexible in adding/removing
suites and archive areas to the source mirror, as well as be easily able
to re-extract everything from source. So much for the extraction part.
Then I need an easy way to access all (unpacked) source packages I have,
query their package metadata, find their root directory and run my
analysis tool of choice on the source package.
Finally there is also a database part, where I'd like to storage the
result of the analysis tool and keep all the history of it.
I've ended up cooking up my own code for the above (not all is done
yet), but there clearly a good part of it that could be factored out
(and done better). Do you think the framework you're imagining at this
point could help with any or all of the above? If yes, I'll be happy to
provide testing and/or comment on whether the design would fit the need
of the above use cases.
FWIW, I believe many other wannabe entrants in DACA would benefit from
the addressing of similar use cases.
Thanks for sharing and for thinking about this!
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Quando anche i santi ti voltano le spalle, | . |. I've fans everywhere
ti resta John Fante -- V. Capossela .......| ..: |.......... -- C. Adams
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