Michael Croes schrieb:
So what would a user do to install a package, lets say gcc?
First, he would search for the package, which might look
like this:
inquisitio --search --tags compiler cpp
First off, there's 2 possibilities:
1. The user knows the package name and types 'paludis -i
package-name'
2. the user doesn't know the name and uses something else to
find the
name out (presumably inquisitio) and then types 'paludis -i
package-name'
Yes, and finding stiff isn't always that easy, and tags help to find
things easier, and they help to find alternatives (you can search
for packages that are similar).
What I tried to point out is that either way you still tell paludis to
install the package using the unique package identifier, not the tags.
Yes, definitely. But it still gives you an advantage, for
non-interactive clients (which atm, we don't have.
Maybe there could also be a way you can tell paludis to install results
10 of the last search. (Which would imply --pretend.)
But maybe that isn't a good idea.
Then he would install the package using paludis.
Maybe an installation mode might be possible using tags, if
the tags are enough to narrow it down, but maybe that might
not be a good idea.
The good thing about this is, that 1. and 2. can change, but
what the user uses (and he should mainly use the tags) stays
the same, so a change wouldn't cause as much confusion as it
would if all three change.
The thing where you go wrong is that you assume that tags are
part of
the unique package name. Of course you don't want tags as part
of the
unique package name, you don't want a category as part of the unique
package name either. The way this turns out right now in gentoo with
paludis is that if a package exists in multiple categories you
need to
provide paludis with extra information to establish the unique
identifier for the package.
No, not at all. The tags don't have anything to do with the way the
packages is identified. They are just additional information that
the user can access.
Do you misunderstood/misread what I wrote? You say tags don't have
anything to do with the way a package is identified, which is exactly
what I was saying, would be nice if you could clarify...
Yeah, I guess I misread your mail, sorry.
If we also (auto-)create some special tags, like system,
world or installed, it would also be possible to for example
search for all installed cpp compilers using --tags
installed compilers cpp.
(Currently one would use --kind for that.)
Let's do versions with tags too and create the Totally Tagged
Package
Manager. All you need to do is figure out tags, you don't need
any other
metadata than tags, that would be useless...
Stop the useless nagging, thank you.
I hope that my nagging did point out to you that if you're gonna add
tags because a package is installed, you might as well add tags for
other stuff that's not supposed to be in package metadata.
Hm, not sure if I understood you here.
inquisitio would add the tag, if the package is installed, on the fly.
Of course it shouldn't modify anything on the disk for that.
And of course, we shouldn't do things without thinking about it, and I
guess that we would realize, when it goes horribly wrong.
(So yes, tags for everything wouldn't work.)
But here we see the problem with tags.
Changing tags should not have any affect on 1. or 2., so
tags should are not a complete replacement for the
categories we currently use.
The should be used for the user interface and only there,
not for the structure our repos have.
Because tags should not be part of the unique identifier for a
packge
this issue doesn't exist.
The real issue when dropping categories is how to distinguish
between
different packages with the same name, I think it has already been
mentioned on the mailing list before. Your email shows that
having tags
fixes the issues you see with categories and shows that if you
use tags
as if they were categories, stuff would go wrong. That's why
they're not
called categories, they're different.
See, you didn't really read what I wrote.
What you are trying to solve belongs to point 1. in my list.
I was *only* talking about what the user uses.
Actually the notion of tags solves point 3. Tags and categories are
somewhat similar, but with categories as implemented in gentoo you limit
packages to one category. If you extend this so packages can be in more
than one category then you might as well call it tags so you can mix
more metadata in. In the end you can still have a multi-level structure
where you can find your packages, so that should not be an issue for the
end user.
Well, in the end, it is more what you are calling it, isn't it? ;)
You could even use a system for the actual storage, inspired by tags
or similar. What I supposed gives you the ability to basically
select just about any solution, because you don't have to worry
about the user interface as much as you had to before.
Which you pointed out in your previous mail to suck because if the tags
change packages would have to be moved around on the 'system for actual
storage'.
Well, I was referring to something "tag-like" whatever that might be.
I'm not really in favor of such a solution, I just wanted to say, that
what I proposed allows you to freely choose the solution for 1. and 2.
There might be other solutions for 3. that achieve that, too, of course. :)
I don't think point 2 is a real issue. It's more a personal preference
how you should lay out packages.
So to answer your three points of concern:
1. Not changed by using tags, only changed by removing categories. Not
solved by categories either because 2 packages can have the same name
and be in the same category. Solved by having a unique identifier for a
package (which you need anyway), then the structure on disk could
perhaps be /path/to/repository/[unique-identifier]. There's other ways
too, but they probably all end up using the unique identifier as part of
the path.
It's not that easy, because you have to think about performance, too.
But basically yes, that's the main problem.
2. Let's say I work on package foo. I don't really care if the dir with
files is /path/to/repository/app-useless/foo or if the dir with is
/path/to/repository/foo, I still end up with the same dir with files. I
think this has nothing to do with tags again, only with removing
categories. Then again, even removing categories doesn't really change
anything, because in gentoo the category is just part of the unique
identifier for a package. The only real difference is that if I work on
half the packages in app-useless, they now might be all over the place,
because I also work on (app-useless/)zoo and (app-useless/)aoo. So the
list which also includes the packages I work on has now grown from just
the 50% of app-useless to all availible packages in a repository... BUT:
if you're sane you're probably not modifying stuff inside the
repository, but rather somewhere outside of the repository where there's
still only those packages I work on, and nothing else...
Working on stuff outside of the repository isn't really a nice thing,
because you lose the functionality that git provides.
What I mainly wanted to say with bringing up a difference between 1. and
2. is, that basically the layout of 1. could be very very ugly (looking
at it as a human being). (But maybe doesn't have to be ugly.)
But only, if you, at the same time, provide something nice in the repo,
that the devs can work on.
3. If we start by using the category as a tag for every package, then by
searching for the tag www-client I would get exactly the same as there's
in the category www-client. Now I think that with tags you can certainly
improve a lot from here, but in worst case it's just as bad or good as
categories, so this seems like an absolute non-issue to me...
Absolutely.
Regards,
Bernd
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