Sounds good to me, unifying tags makes sense. The one thing I'd add is a selection of standardized tags for general categorization, along the lines of the existing: https://docs.zeek.org/projects/package-manager/en/stable/package.html#suggested-tags
Probably best to start with extending that section with the guidelines you propose before approaching package authors with individual PRs. That way, there'll be something to point them to. Robin On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 17:14 -0000, Duffy OCraven wrote: > I want to start a discussion here of the guidance we want to give to package > authors on the tags they assign in zkg.meta, to ensure people have a chance > to chime in, and we start-out with the benefit of multi-perspective group > process, so we reach for the best result. > > My proposal is just to articulate principles for good tag selection, to rein > in the existing scattershot we've seen so far, by giving the authors guidance > on what we want to see. I think we need to do this, to counteract that nearly > everyone takes their guidance from what they see the people before them have > done. If bad habits occurred and are allowed to persist, people will > dutifully adopt those bad habits. > > I posit that: the ideal set of tags will provide matches with queries of the > form: "Has a plugin for X already been coded?" And also matches with some of > the relevant queries for: "What other plugins have been coded for aspect Y?" > Find the words by filling in the sentences: "I implemented X." and "I > implemented an instance of Y." For Y, use the plural (indicators, scanners, > scripts) except when only the singular makes sense. > > Use the hyphen where punctuation is needed. Never use underscore. > > Don't add "analyzer" nor "protocol" nor "plugin" as a suffix. > > Don't mention bro or zeek. These are all Bro/zeek analyzers and plugins. > > The ideal set of tags can also include one that is perhaps unique to this > package (but not four or five that are unique to this package). This is as a > moniker, so that saying "go look at fizzamajig" should lead, by following the > fizzamajig tag, to what you intended the listener to see. > > Conversely avoid banal tags. If you write a piece of software, nonetheless > "a", "piece", "of", and "software" are all bad tags. > > Capital letters should be a rarity, i.e. in DoS because dos to many eyes, > immediately connotes a pre-Windows Microsoft operating system. att&ck is fine > punctuated that way, and PostgreSQL and all the CVE are reasonable to > capitalize. SSL, TLS, TCP, PKI, UPnP, and EternalBlue are stalking-horses, to > consider, while we reach consensus, whether we are better off just > lowercasing where the capitalization is not essential. If in doubt, just use > alllowercase. Tags function quite well in alllowercase, and that is what most > people have done. > > If anyone uses the hyphen-form for a word, then everyone shall use the > hyphen-form for consistency. It does often increase readability, and is a > small price for the increase of understanding in the portion of our community > which it benefits. > > Anyone who disagrees with any of these details, PLEASE do chime in as I only > seek that we we reach for the best result, not that we we reach for my idea > of what the best result is. > > Anyone who has additional heuristics of goodness to add, also chime in with > them. We'll probably, after consensus, enact change by sending some PRs to a > few packages to unify them more. I did a sort of census last evening. Of 273 > tags used, I would banish 51 of them, and revise the punctuation or > capitalization of 15 others. > - Duffy O'Craven > _______________________________________________ > zeek-dev mailing list -- zeek-dev@lists.zeek.org > To unsubscribe send an email to zeek-dev-le...@lists.zeek.org -- Robin Sommer * Corelight, Inc. * ro...@corelight.com * www.corelight.com _______________________________________________ zeek-dev mailing list -- zeek-dev@lists.zeek.org To unsubscribe send an email to zeek-dev-le...@lists.zeek.org
