Vocabulary additions

[Samuel Bronson]

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Enrico Zini <enrico at enricozini.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 07:23:56PM -0500, Samuel Bronson wrote:
>
>> I'm proposing a few things for addition to the debtags vocabulary:
>>
>> * devel::lang:erlang and implemented-in::erlang, for Erlang stuff
>>
>> * devel::lang:vhdl, for VHDL tools
>>
>> * devel::lang:verilog, for Verilog tools
>>
>> * devel::lang:TODO, for development tools for languages that do not yet
>>   have their own "devel::lang:" tag.
>>
>> * works-with-format::diff, for tools that work with diff-format
>>   patches. (Now if only we could apply debtags to commands and
>>   subcommands within a package, then we could tag stuff like "git diff"
>>   and "git am"...)
>>
>> I have a debtags patch to justify all but the Erlang tags and
>> devel::lang:TODO; there are LOT of erlang-related packages, and TODO
>> tags are rather meta.
>
> devel::lang:TODO is definitely a good idea. It's rather meta indeed: I
> reckon it makes sense to justify it by its need/use case, rather than by
> the number of packages.
>
> I've added devel::lang:TODO, devel::lang:erlang, implemented-in::erlang
> and works-with-format::diff; those seem very much uncontroversial to me.
> I've also sent your works-with-format::diff to the site after making
> sure the site loaded the new version of the vocabulary.

Cool, thanks.

> I'm a bit less sure about Verilog and VHDL: I am not an electronics
> expert; if I understand correctly that they are languages used to design
> electronics rather than to write software, perhaps we are better served
> by field::electronics (which exists) and perhaps new tags
> works-with-format::verilog and works-with-format::vhdl?
>
> The rationale for that is that the "devel::*" facet is specifically for
> Software Development.

Huh. I just figured a programming language was a programming language!
 Didn't realize it might be important whether the language was
primarily used to write hardware or software.  (And, with Programmable
Logic Devices like FPGAs, the line gets fairly blurry anyway.)  I was
actually anticipating an argument more along the lines of: you haven't
met quorum for those tags yet, foolish mortal!

In any case, most (all?) of the implementation packages here seem to
be simulators, which actually run Verilog/VHDL programs, though Icarus
Verilog, Alliance, and FAUhdlc appear to also have support for
synthesis. (GFDL is also referred to as a compiler, but evidently that
refers to plain-old assembly/machine-code generation, not any kind of
hardware synthesis.)

> OTOH I see such things as "verilog compilers". OTOH there are such
> things as povray and csound, which compile languages into something that
> isn't software.

I would propose a devel::lang:povray tag, too, except:

* There weren't that many packages to which it would apply
* Afaik, they all had "pov" in the name, which made them pretty easy
to find without any tag
* They seem to have disappeared in any case

> As I said, I don't know much about the field: I feel like I should raise
> the issue, and I'm happy to stand corrected.

I don't know too much about it, either; after all, I've only earned a
bachelors degree in it, not a masters or anything :-). Anyway, it's
not really *too* big of a deal at this point, because there aren't
presently many irrelevant packages that turn up when you search for
"vhdl" or "verilog" in package descriptions.