[Debtags-devel] Proposed Debtags goals for Etch

[Benjamin Mesing]

Hello,


> I've just had a very nice conversation with a couple of people around
> the table, and we came out with a list of ? simple Debtags goals for
> Etch:
> 
>  - now that we have Debtags data in the Packages file, we should find a
>    way to keep it updated.  This afternoon I'll talk with aj about it.
>    The idea we had at lunch was to have the archive pull the (possibly
>    signed) data from some URL.
I don't know much about the package file format - but does this mean
that the Tags: field can be set by the maintainer now? If so, the
primary goal must be, to mostly stabelize the vocabulary.

The other goal I consider to be of huge importance, is to make the
tagging as complete as possible. An incomplete data is of little use for
the users or may even be of negative benefit.

This leads to another important point. A comprehensive explanation of
the vocabulary and a guidline for the selection of tags must be written
and published, so that people know what tags are appropriate.
Points that should be mentioned are e.g.:
      * every package should have one or more tags from role::
      * every application should have one or more tags from interface::
      * each application should have one or more tags from
        implemented-in::
              * Btw. perhaps it would be a good to add a
                implemented-in::other tag? (However this leads back to
                the discussion if we should try to try to avoid an
                explosion of the tagset or not...)
              * What about documentation packages? Would make
                implemented-in make sense for them too (e.g.
                implemented-in::html, implemented-in::sgml,...)?
              * I've added C# to the implemented-in facet (I've named it
                c-sharp as I don't know if a # is allowed in the
                vocabulary.) Enrico, could you please change this to c#
                if it is allowed as this is more appropriate?
      * ....
Probably it would be great, if the AI-Tagger could be used to assist the
developers in the tagging process. However it is not yet in production
state, and I am not too happy with the overall design. Perl is not the
first choice language for user friendly applications. However I know no
other language with the same string processing capabilities, and I've
already invested a lot of work. I hope I will find some time to improve
the tagger and make it usable. But this should be discussed later.


>  - if data goes automatically to the Packages file, we should have a
>    stricter control on what goes in.  A simple and good option is to
>    have the central database reside on the svn repository, and
>    committing manually the patches from the web interface.
Why do we need stricter control for this? What is the difference in
automatically changing the package file and automatically changing the
debtags database (or is this not done automatically now?). Is one or the
other more likely to be "attacked"? 


>  - implement simple pre-cooked tag-expression-based package filters into
>    aptitude (something like:
>      (!(role::aux-data || role::aux-dummy || role::aux-shlib))
>    or
>      (!culture::* || culture::italian) )
What do you mean here?

The other goals sound sensible to me.

Greetings Ben