[Debtags-devel] Re: Recent progress

[Erich Schubert]

Hi Herv=E9,
I believe that once we reach some "policy" status for debtags, the
responsiveness to bug reports due to incomplete tagging etc. will
increase. ;-)
But we need something nice to show for then.

In some cases, our current data is *really* bad, just look at how many
packages have only media::mail assigned to them (but no longer the
"incompletely tagged" tag)

> - even if the tagging of a package is complete at a given moment,
>   there is currently no way to know it _is_ complete. And even if we knew
>   it was, there is currently no way of knowing which tags were introduced
>   after that, that might make the tagging (given the whole new set)
>   incomplete again.

Actually, there is a "carefully tagged" service tag, which is to be
used for that.
And the time when this tag was added can be reconstructed using my backups.

> - So, as a maintainer responsible for the tagging of a package
>   wanting to ensure that the tagging of my package is up-to-date, I reall=
y
>   wouldn't want to wander through the list of tags from time to time,
>   trying to find some new dispersed tags that may apply to my package.
>   It's in no way efficient (long and repetitive process), and you might
>   still miss some new interesting tags.

As soon as the maintainers will do this, our vocabulary will need to
be mostly frozen; then we can either go through the packages list
ourselves when we add a new tag, or publish it with changelogs,
similar to the way policy changes are handeled now.
We can then maybe write a lintian tool which will spit out a message
when new tags have been introduced in the meantime and the maintainer
needs to review them.

> - the current interface (http://debian.vitavonni.de/packagebrowser/index.=
cgi)
>   is (IMHO) hardly usable for any of the two important tasks it
>   should help with:

Well, editing is currently better done using debtags-edit.

>     tagging of a package I know the name of. For the moment, I have to
>     first click in any subgroup so he shows me a list of packages,
>     click on the name of a package, and then change the name of the
>     package for the one I want in the URL. Oh my...

Yeah, that is the same way I do it. Havn't gotten around to placing a
search form somewhere.

>     Ok... is the tagging considered complete for now? I don't know. :-(
>     So I look to the "tags that can be attached to this package". But

Well, when is it complete? I don't know either. Maybe when you go over
the list and don't want to add any more tags

>     what do some tags exactly mean? Mystery... For example, I see

Yes, vocabulary descriptions are not complete either.

>     convinced by things like "Service tags" (what does it mean?),

Well, they are for service purposes. ;-)

>     "Role of the package in the system" (my sound converter doesn't
>     play any particular role in the system, right?), "Purpose of the

Sure, it is an application for you, not a server for example.

>     Well, I'm sorry to have to say that again (we've had this
>     conversation before, Erich), but I think this way of presenting
>     things is really unusable in practice for average users... :-(

Yes, but mostly because tagging is just *SOOO* different. Packages are
lacking lots and lots of tags, so the subgroups don't make sense
currently.

Greetings,
Erich Schubert
--
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