[Debtags-devel] [draft d-d-a announcement] Debtags reaching the Packages file

Enrico Zini enrico at enricozini.org
Thu Jul 21 19:26:15 UTC 2005


[this is the draft announcement for debian-devel-announce.  I'm posting
 it here for review and to see if I missed something.  I plan to post
 it to d-d-a around friday night GMT]


Hello everyone from the Debtags team!

As you've probably noticed, last week Anthony Towns merged the Debtags
data into the Packages file.  This marks a big step into having Debtags
becoming more mainstream (and more useful) in Debian.


New possibilities
=================

apt-cache show
--------------

The first outcome of this is that the tag data can now be seen in the
output of 'apt-cache show <package>'.


grep-dctrl
----------

You can also use grep-dctrl with the tag data.  Here is an example:

  grep-aptavail -sPackage -FTag 'use::editing' \
		-a 'works-with::rasterimage' \
                -a --not 'role::aux-shlib'

(the role::aux-shlib is still not widely used, but it's going to change
 soon)


pkgsync
-------

Debtags support has also been added to pkgsync by Steinar H. Gunderson:

  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debtags-devel/2005-July/000524.html


If you are new to Debtags, don't forget to also try out packagesearch
and debtags-edit, that have been supporting tag searches for quite a
while.


Software development
====================

libtagcoll1-dev contains functions for matching a set of tags against a
tag expressions such as:

  'use::editing && works-with::rasterimage && !role::aux-shlib"

You can now use those functions on the data from the Packages file.
Contact me if you want to try and use it in your software.

To tickle your appetite, here are two interesting tag expressions that
could be used, for example, to hide uninteresting packages from a
package list:

  !(role::aux-data || role::aux-dummy || role::aux-shlib)
    Hides all packages that are binary-indep data files, dummy packages
    for upgrades and shared libraries.
 
  (!culture::* || culture::italian)
    Hides all culture-specific packages that are not interesting to me.


Future developments
===================

This mail in the debtags-devel list talks about Debtags plans for Etch.
It originated an interesting thread that includes some upcoming
refactorings of the tag vocabulary:

  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debtags-devel/2005-July/000525.html


Learning more
=============

Here are some resources to learn more about Debtags:

  The Debtags website:
    http://debtags.alioth.debian.org

  The debtags-devel mailing list:
    http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debtags-devel

  The Debtags paper I wrote for Debconf5:
    http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html
    http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.pdf
    http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.rst
 

Things are getting more and more exciting: stay tuned, get involved!


Ciao,

Enrico

--
GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <enrico at debian.org>
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