[Popcon-developers] Bug#545000: popularity-contest: popcon should have option to report arch only

[Bill Allombert]

On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 08:56:17PM +0900, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> Package: popularity-contest
> Version: 1.46
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> While popcon report numbers are refereed sometimes to assess
> architecture popularity,

Hello Osamu,
Please understand that this project is the 'Debian package popularity contest'.
Using it solely to assess architecture popularity is diverting it from its
goal.

> While some admins are reluctant to report softwares used in detail for
> their system,
> 
> While /etc/popularity-contest.conf contains most basic configuration of
> popularity-contest,
> 
> Wile /etc/popularity-contest.conf is missing configuration to shut off
> reporting package lists,
> 
> It will be nice to have the following option as technical compromise:
> 
> REPORT="full"
> REPORT="arch"
> 
> and using this value to skip following part in /usr/sbin/popularity-contest
> 
> # Read dpkg database of installed packages
> open PACKAGES, "dpkg-query --show --showformat='\${status} \${package}\\n'|";
> while (<PACKAGES>)
> {
>   ....
> }
> 
> With this, we get more reports.

But these extra report will be nearly useless. Worse, this will encourage the
practice of only reporting the architecture, which is detrimental to popcon.

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

Imagine a large red swirl here.