Tags questions

[Enrico Zini]

On Thu, Aug 23, 2007 at 10:07:19PM -0400, Ethan wrote:

> I'm not sure if this is the right place for this kind of question or not, but I
> thought I'd ask and see if I got flamed :)

Don't worry :)

> 1) I see that there are tags works-with-format::zip, but not
> works-with-format::gzip. I'm not sure exactly how useful something like that
> would be, or how many formats tags ought to be created for..

I think there's no works-with-format::gzip because it's so widely
supported that I have trouble seeing a use case for someone looking for
"something that can handle gzips": almost everything can.

There is however more than a use case for looking for programs that can
unpack a .zip file.  At least, this would be the rationale, but I can of
course be missing something.


> 2) I'm trying to tag libcompress-raw-zlib-perl, which is a low-level interface
> to the zlib library that isn't used by anything except other, higher-level Perl
> zlib libraries. I would say the average user is going to think of it as a
> role::shared-lib, because even if they develop software, they'd probably look
> for a higher-level zlib library (libiocompress-zlib-perl,
> libcompress-zlib-perl). On the other hand, they might want to use it as a
> role::devel-lib if they're developing for some weird situation where the
> lower-level interface is better (embedded systems.. that use Perl? Not sure).
> For now I tagged it role::devel-lib, but I thought it would be helpful to
> explain why this was a hard decision for me and ask. DebTaggingGuidelines says
> that role::devel-lib is any "code library that can be used by developers"
> [emphasis mine], but edit-help says "What does the package look like from this
> point of view?"

I understand your point.  Maybe we need something to encode a concept
like "the maintainer believe this package is not to be used directly,
but instead as a runtime support for more high-level libraries", but I
can't think of any straightforward way of doing that.

I'd say, happily go with role::devel-lib and leave it to the users to
decide if they need it or not.  In fact, you can take advantage of the
package description and add a note telling them that they most likely
don't, unless in very few specific cases.


Ciao,

Enrico

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