[Mageia-discuss] Introducing mageia-app-db

[Samuel Verschelde]

Le jeudi 18 novembre 2010 07:20:37, andre999 a écrit :
> > - another simple way could be to group by source rpm. It won't always work, but that can be a first step, to experiment with.
> > - task meta-packages can be another solution
> > - we may have a look at what a package provides and group together packages whose names are close and which provide the same thing (eg. all packages which provide "openoffice.org-l10n" grouped together)
> >    
> Excellent points.  Which gives me an idea how to accomplish folding, 
> without changing the internals of the rpms :
> First, note that very few if any package names contain ":".
> So to fold packages associated with package "foo", on the line of "foo", 
> we could name the associated packages "foo:suba", "foo:subb", etc, 
> beginning with the name of the primary package + ":".
> To fold associated packages on a subsequent line (as would be useful for 
> localisation packages, for example), we would create a meta-package 
> "foo:subc".  Seeing that it is a meta package, the packages under it 
> would be folded into a line *under* "foo".  And expanding the 
> meta-package line would show all contained packages.
> Other meta packages (without ":" in the name) would be similarly 
> expandable.  The only difference being that they would not be associated 
> with another group of packages.
> This approach has the advantage of leaving the internals of rpm 
> unchanged for this purpose.
> One just adds ":" to the name of associated packages, and creates some 
> grouping meta-packages.
> Actually I'm assuming that there is a means of readily identifying a 
> meta-package other than "task" in the name.  Correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> Another advantage is it lets users more readily see the packages 
> contained in a meta-package.  And in installing, potentially allows 
> deselecting a package contained in a meta-package to be installed.
> (Yes, I know, a meta-package only refers to other packages, not 
> containing them.)

I've got some difficulty to visualize the packages hierarchy in this proposal. Can you give an example ? 

However I'd rather experiment first approaches based on existing data, like src.rpm, provides, existing package names and maybe creating some meta-packages if needed, and only if this fails envision something with a broader impact.

> > Another problem you mentioned is how to define what an "application" is. We could use some help on this subject too :)
> >    
> That is definitely tricky.  It should probably be more than just GUI.
> It might be simpler to just rely on folding ? (What is specifically 
> folded with what will be ultimately decided by the packager.)

At the very least we have to put apart libs, locales...

> > You can have a look at this wiki page (on our new Redmine project, thanks to Jehane for setting it up) which is dedicated to this matter : http://mageia-app-db.tuxette.fr/projects/mageia-app-db/wiki/Applications
> >    
> So I imagine my thoughts go under "crazy ideas" ? ;)
> (I like how the wiki page is set up.)

There's already a page for package folding, linked from the Applications wiki page : http://mageia-app-db.tuxette.fr/projects/mageia-app-db/wiki/GroupSimilarPackages 
You can put everything there I think.

Samuel