ARA autotagger queries

[Justin B Rye]

Justin B Rye wrote:
> Beware of role::dummy library packages (like libpils0)... maybe they
> could be distinguished by their Size.  Hmm, libgtk2-ruby1.8 even
> claims in its description to be a "dummy package", but contains lots
> of .rb files.  What's going on there? 

I've done a quick sweep for packages that should have role::dummy
tags but don't, or the reverse.  I found all the packages with very
low Size and no role::dummy tag, then used apt-file to filter this
list down to a shortlist of 250-odd with no files outside
/usr/share/doc.

I was going to fix these, but I've hit a snag.  I don't want to
simply throw away information like the "implemented-in::c
interface::commandline role::program" tags on bogofilter; they were
correct when they were added, and they should be migrated to the
packages the transitional package pulls in.  Unfortunately, the web 
interface makes tag-maintenance tasks like this more or less
impossible; debtags-edit does at least allow me to select all the
packages with "bogofilter" in their name, but then I'm stuck using a
CPU-hog GUI app on my ten-year-old Testing machine; fixing that one
set of tags took me half an hour.  Oh, for a nice lightweight
text-mode tag-editor...


Meanwhile on the theory side, how much is a role::dummy package
allowed to contain?  Symlinks, suite-wide menu/manpage files and the
like, fair enough; but how about these:

 idle contains a 5 line Python wrapper script,
			/usr/bin/idle
 ecj-bootstrap contains a 31 line shell wrapper script,
			/usr/bin/ecj-bootstrap
 crossfire-client contains a 27 kilobyte executable binary,
			/usr/games/cfsndserv
 asterisk-h323 contains a 291 kilobyte shared library,
			/usr/lib/asterisk/modules/chan_h323.so
 emacs22 contains a 5.3 megabyte executable binary,
			/usr/bin/emacs22-x

All of these claim to be role::dummy.  Where should we draw the
line?
-- 
JBR
Ankh kak! (Ancient Egyptian blessing)