[haiku-bugs] Re: [Haiku] #9825: package information are too restrictive
- From: "bonefish" <trac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 07:10:55 -0000
#9825: package information are too restrictive
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Reporter: X512 | Owner: nobody
Type: enhancement | Status: new
Priority: normal | Milestone: R1
Component: - General | Version: R1/Package Management
Resolution: | Keywords:
Blocked By: | Blocking:
Has a Patch: 0 | Platform: All
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Comment (by bonefish):
Replying to [comment:2 X512]:
> Replying to [comment:1 bonefish]:
> Summary field is probably enougth, there are no need to force write long
description.
Of course the developer and the packager always know what the package is
about. Our focus here is on user friendliness. The summary attribute only
contains a very short (single line) description which will only very
rarely be sufficient to convey all the relevant information. After reading
the description the user should know what the package is about and why
they may or may not want to install it. If, as a packager, you really
can't come up with more useful information than the summary already
provides, just copy and paste it to the description and make it a proper
sentence. That really isn't a lot of work and only to be done once when
initially writing a package info.
> License sometimes is unknown and can't be provided (for example author
of program didn't mentioned licence).
When no kind of license or terms of use is given, then, by default, you
are not allowed to use the software.
> Also not all licenses are called or called generally such as "EULA".
Will this introduce name conflict or not?
Yes, there would be a conflict. When packaging a software with a custom
license the usual approach is to name the license file like the software.
E.g. have a look at "/boot/common/data/licenses" for examples.
> Why file name should be dublicated inside a package itself? Also spaces
and Unicode characters are OK in filenames (excluding FAT12 and other
ancient filesystems).
>
> Personally I'm strictly against "computer" file names and always call
files with natural names.
The package file name isn't something a user usually comes in contact
with. It isn't meant for user friendly reading. Instead it encodes
important information like the package version and architecture. Package
files may also be stored on systems other than Haiku and may be
transferred via various protocols. Sticking to ASCII characters without
whitespace avoids potential character encoding and quoting/escaping
issues.
> Packages can be not stored in a repository. For example it can be
provided by some commertical corporation with special distribufion
conditions.
I don't know what distribution conditions you're thinking of. Generally it
might be interesting even for a commercial company to provide a
repository, so that bug fix updates can be delivered automatically to the
user. If, for some reason, they want to provide only the package file
itself, they could build one per target language with the respectively
translated meta information.
As written before, we haven't really worked out how exactly we want to
handle localization. We may also provide some way to build all
translations into a package.
> Why not localize PackageInfo itself? for example by edding ":<language
id>" to the end of each localizable field?
That would require the package info file to be changed and the package to
be rebuilt whenever a translation is added or a typo is fixed in any of
them. I think generally we should keep the translations separate from the
package.
--
Ticket URL: <http://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/9825#comment:3>
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