On Sun, Dec 11, 2016 at 10:16:51PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote: > On 14518 March 1977, Josh Triplett wrote: > >> (my first thought was a canonical online location, but these tools may > >> not want that at runtime and can't rely on it at build time, but maybe > >> that should be the source used for the package) > > Packaging this data (section names, short descriptions, and long > > descriptions) seems like a great idea. Ideally, packages would have a > > Depends on this and use the data at runtime, rather than using a > > Build-Depends and compiling it in. With some care, such a package could > > also serve as the basis for the descriptions on packages.debian.org. > > Does it need a package? Or just a file in the archive somewhere?
If we can get every package to handle this entirely at runtime, then ideally I'd suggest archive metadata downloaded by apt. That would have the advantage of automatically handling new sections, including for third-party archives. Packaging it doesn't have that advantage, though it also seems logistically simpler. - Josh Triplett