[proposal] Simplified junior tags & debtags-based replacement for metapackages

[Ben Armstrong]

On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 12:05 +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> For the moment I have the <something> in mind that fits the metapackages
>       med-<something>
> If I would be really sure that this is the best idea I would have just
> done it.  (Comments are welcome.)

Well, my thoughts about that are that any such aspect of the software is
better as an aspect of the software itself, distinct from the CDD.

For instance, med-pharmacy depends on chemtool which has these tags:

Tag: field::chemistry, interface::x11, role::sw:application,
uitoolkit::gtk, use::editing, works-with::image:vector,
works-with::image:vector:svg, x11::application

If Debian-med discovers that this package is good for the field of
pharmaceutical research, I see no reason why there should not be new tag
field::pharmaceutical-research, and that chemtool should be tagged with
it.

In fact, my idea for cdd::* tags can be implemented using an existing
debtags aspect, "suite::" (described as "The package is related to a
bigger group of packages").  In the case of chemtool, in addition to
adding the new field:: tag, I would add suite::med:core.

A user could then ask for all suite::med:core packages, just the
suite::med:core packages in field::pharmaceutical-research, or
cherry-pick tags from various different fields, depending on how much of
the whole Debian-Med CDD they wish to install.  None of the modularity
of the existing metapackages is lost, and in fact, quite a bit more
modularity is gained.

Furthermore, it is possible using this classification system to have new
packages tagged field::pharmceutical-research, yet not be tagged
suite::med:core (as hard as that may be to imagine for this particular
case, since we as yet have so few choices in this area ... but please
bear with me for the purpose of illustration).  Packages that are deemed
'not yet solid enough' or redundant can therefore enter Debian, be
tagged with appropriate tags so Debian-Med users might try them, and be
developed to the point where they are finally suitable to enter
Debian-Med.

Ben