debtags: surprised about FAQ (non-)content ("search"), and usability questions

[Andreas Mohr]

Hi,

while e.g. the http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debtags.html
document mentions "searching for software",
the FAQ at
https://wiki.debian.org/Debtags/FAQ
manages the feat of not mentioning the "search" keyword even once(!)
(I was wondering what the h*ll tags were supposed to be,
if not for package searching, and how they should be handled)

In fact, it gets even more confusing:
Originally I had tried a
apt-cache search made-of::svg
where I had expected it to come up with kwalletcli
, since there an "apt-cache show" lists:
Tag: admin::TODO, implemented-in::c, implemented-in::c++,
 implemented-in::shell, interface::commandline, made-of::icons,
 made-of::man, made-of::svg, role::plugin, role::program,
 scope::utility, security::TODO, suite::bsd, suite::kde, use::storing,
 works-with::TODO
, but that search failed (almost certainly because tags are a concept external
to base package descriptions, but simply *additionally* listed by apt-cache).

So, perhaps FAQ entry "Why aren't debtags integrated with apt?"
should simply be extended to say
"apt-cache, however, does show the tags of a package. "..., but searching for tags is not supported (use debtags instead).


And there's another issue here that debtags(1) says:
       show <pkg>
              show informations about a package, like apt-cache show does, but
              adding the tag informations from the debtags index

Well, then I'm left wondering why my apt-cache show is acting differently,
in that it *does* also manage to list the Tag: line...
Quite likely that's a matter of stale man page content only.
Versions here:
ii  debtags                               1.12.1                             i386         Enables support for package tags
ii  apt                                   0.9.16.1                           i386         commandline package manager



So, my confusion somewhat boils down to being a bit surprised
that apt-cache is not search-integrated with tags
(but given usual UNIX philosophy
mechanisms possibly should be kept separated).

Thanks for an otherwise very useful mechanism and for listening,

Andreas Mohr