[Popcon-developers] Bug#321365: popularity-contest: documentation of popcon tags v.s. a "vote"

[Bill Allombert]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 09:47:31PM -0500, Nathan Stratton Treadway wrote:
> I've been noticing the popularity-contest package/project mentioned
> frequently on Debian mailing lists and similar places, and often those
> messages mention "votes" for this or that package.
> 
> However, when I installed the package myself and looked through the
> documentation (files in /usr/share/doc/popularity-contest as well as 
> the man page), I didn't see the term "vote" used or explained anywhere.
> 
> After looking at http://popcon.debian.org/ as well as the
> popularity-contest Perl source itself, I am thinking that a package is
> considered "voted" if none of the other three tags get applied to it.
> 
> Assuming this is correct, it might avoid a little confusion for the
> uninitiated if this fact where explained in the README file (along with
> the the description of the three possible <tag> strings).

Hello Nathan,

This is not technically correct. "vote" is decided by the server side,
not by the client side. It is true that tagless packages are considered
"voted", but tagged packages can be considered "voted" if some "voted"
packages depend on them. Actually the tags are not used by the server
when computing "voted" packages. 

The distinction is important, because libraries atime is unreliable
due to the use of ldconfig, so libraries are marked NOFILES, but we still
want to know about libraries usage, so the use of dependencies allow to
make recently used libraries as "voted".

I will add the following to the FAQ

Q) What is considered a 'vote' for a package ?

A) A computer 'vote' for a package if according to the data provided in the
   report, a program provided or depending on the package was used less than
   thirty days ago. This computation is performed by the popcon server.

I hope this clear this issue.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe at debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.