[Debtags-devel] Updating tags on svn

[Thaddeus H. Black]

[Subscribers:  This reply is safe to skip.  Nothing critical is here.]

Justin wrote:
> >>>>  Most packages will get no more than one of the four tags
> >>>>  role::sw:{utility,daemon,application,amusement}.
> >> 
> >> Maybe this is less ambiguous:
> >> # Packages will not usually get multiple tags out of the set
> >> # role::sw:{utility,daemon,application,amusement}.
> > 
> > Unfortunately I do not understand this conversation.  Sorry.  Feel free
> > to clarify.
> 
> In principle the first version could mean that most packages will
> get no tags under other facets, or that no packages will get role::
> tags other than these four.  Or readers might realise that these
> interpretations are unlikely, but be confused into guessing a
> meaning it doesn't strictly support, such as that sw:server tags are
> forbidden on sw:daemon packages.

I see.  Your wording is better.  Accepted.

> (From here on, remember it's all issues I wouldn't have bothered to
> raise if I hadn't already been writing!) 

Okay.

> >> There are places where the definitions seem to be describing
> >> binaries instead of packages,
> > 
> > In Debian terms, I assume that you mean "executables instead of
> > packages."  If so, you're right.  I couldn't find a more elegant way to
> > write it.  One could lengthen "as find" to "as the find executable," but
> > like Goethe, Churchill and Hemingway, we should save the excess words, I
> > think.
> 
> Only a couple were cases where there was any question of the name
> being misleading:
> * mozilla - "mozilla-browser" is the one with the application in it.
> * perl - it's "perl-base".
> So forget those.

Okay.

> What I'm really thinking of is the more nebulous
> danger that by starting from individual executables you'll overlook
> the way they work together:
> * latex - is in tetex-bin, along with a great many utilities,
> 	several of which are not much smaller.  Is the package
> 	really "an application"? 

No, it isn't.  But for our purposes it probably is.  The main purpose of
the package is to provide the tex and latex compilers.  I would say that
most of the other stuff in tetex-bin is accessory thereto.

> * autotools - actually I'm not sure either what executable or what
> 	package you were thinking of here, but are you quite sure it
> 	isn't a toolchain of utilities?

Package maintainers will know (or guess) what the autotools are:
automake; autoconf; libtool.  These are widely used, somewhat
controversial, and of interest to programmers only.  One builds
libdebtags with the autotools, for instance.

"Autotools" is not some word I made up, incidentally.  This is what the
autotools' upstream developers call them.

> >> # Configuration         
> >> # scripts (as the kernel's) whose only normal mode is a series of    
> >> # questions and answers
> >
> > The other example which comes to mind is the obsolete xf86config.
> > However, this is not a package in itself; so, no, I cannot give the
> > example you seek.  (If a better example occurs to you, let me know.)
> 
> There's still an "xdebconfigurator" package, though I don't know how
> it compares to "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86".

I don't know, either.

> > The reason I wrote those words was to support Erich's useful criterion
> > that a utility is something used in a processing chain.  Taken alone,
> > the words say nothing very important, but in the context they clarify
> > the point that mere crudity does not make a program a utility.
> 
> They aren't clarifying it for me,

Are they positively confusing?  If not, if the words are merely a
meaningless cipher, then we probably need to keep them.  They convey
useful information to package maintainers.  As Manoj Srivastava has
recently pointed out, one of Debian's most important groups of
users---from the maintainers' point of view---is the maintainers
themselves.  Although we honor inexperienced users, we do not coddle
them, and Manoj is right.  How could it be otherwise?

> because I'm only guessing what the
> hypothetical Q&A package would be like - if it's like "make gconfig"

Now you turn the tables on me.  There are lots of things I do not know
about Debian; this is one of them.  What is "make gconfig"?

> with an added "load tarball" menu-option and a progress bar, then
> I'd certainly see that package as an application, but if you can run 
> "yes | linuxconfigurator", that's another story.

I like the illustration.  Well, one could run "yes | linuxconfigurator",
but

    (a) this is presumably not what the hypothetical
    `linuxconfigurator' was meant for;

    (b) one can abuse most any interactive applications through
    robot-users like `expect', but this hardly makes them
    non-interactive, yet `yes' is nothing but an extremely
    simple-minded robot-user;

    (c) "yes | linuxconfigurator" would probably produce a
    nonsensical configuration.
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