Announcing Debian Package Tags

Erich Schubert erich@debian.org
Tue, 29 Apr 2003 03:19:57 +0200


Hello,

Of course we always intended to have "Tags:" lines added to package
description files. But to actually get the system working we needed data
and application prototypes. Guess we've got part of that now. ;)

On the long run:
- packages should include the tags in their control file
  (so custom packages / private repositories can be tagged as well)
- the allowed tags list should be fixed and rarely changed.
  (only after discussion on -devel etc. almost like policy changes)
- policy should require that tags are added
- there are guidelines what the tags mean, which "kinds" of tags need to
  be added (application-type etc.)
- lintian checks the tags for validity

- menu system uses tags (per-installed-binary, not per-package)
- there is tag-apropos (same data as above)

- sourceforge and fresmeat switch from trove to our tags ;)
- HTML and XML stop using the term "tag" to avoid confusion ;)
- the whole world uses tags! *gg*

Greetings,
Erich Schubert
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