On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 06:11:28 +0100
Marius Mauch <genone@g.o> wrote:

> (no tool support for either solution)

Well, actually i've put some bits of code in the bugreport I've
mentioned above, so there is tool support for the use.local.desc
solution (equery and emerge). That was more to demonstrate how
easy it was to implement tho, and i agree it's not the only point
of the discussion.

> use.local.desc for package-specific short descriptions (like at
> the moment) and metadata.xml for longer detailed descriptions
> if required

That sounds like a good idea. So, to summarize (just to check
i've understood your proposal):

 - users should know when a flag is really a must-have for a
given package, or is at the contrary not advised, things like
that. That kind of quick hints, warnings, and other answers to
obvious questions like "Is DVD support by mplayer better with the
'dvdread' flag?" only require short notes (one sentence) in
general.  But what is important is that they get written whenever
there is something to say about a flag which is not already in
use.desc (because package-specific), and that they are easily
accessible for the user.  Here, use.local.desc seems better,
because there is no such thing as an "echo >>" to drop a quick
note somewhere, and because it doesn't require complex code or
access to multiple files to get optionaly displayed by emerge in
pretend mode.

 - user might sometimes wonder what is the "libfoo" that the "foo"
flag description ("add support for libfoo") talks about. That may
require a long description (one paragraphe), which don't need to
be in use.local.desc.  Metadata.xml is fine here, since anyway
that's the kind of things you write using a text editor. 

That raises on more question tho: if someone wants to write a
long description for a global flag, where does he do it?

-- 
TGL.
--
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