Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Albert Hopkins <marduk@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Questions about XML files used in portage
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:31:25
Message-Id: 1127305738.19990.17.camel@blackwidow
1 I'm trying to incorporate into my project the metadata.xml files used in
2 portage, but I have a few questions:
3
4 1. It seems like many of the package metadata.xml files \-escape
5 "special" characters a la bash. This isn't really necessary in
6 XML and if there are special characters, such as '<', etc. then
7 there is an XML way of presenting them. Is there a special
8 reason that the '\' is used (i.e does software exist that
9 requires this)?
10 2. Are metadata.xml files a requirement for categories? There are
11 a few categories that do not have one:
12 * x11-proto
13 * x11-apps
14 * x11-drivers
15 3. If a metadata.xml has a <longdescription> element, is it
16 required to contain text? There is at least one package that
17 has an empty <longdescription>. I wanted to use the
18 <longdescription> to override the DESCRIPTION in the .ebuild, if
19 it exists, but in this case the DESCRIPTION is actually
20 infinitely longer than the <longdescription>.
21 4. Speaking of <longdescription>, are line breaks to be preserved
22 in their representation? There are a few packages whose
23 <longdescription> use line breaks for formatting. One in
24 particular, gnustep-libs/steptalk not only prefers to preserve
25 line breaks, but also appears to prefer a fixed-width font in
26 it's representation. Is this also a requirement?
27
28 If anyone has answers to any of the above questions I thank you in
29 advance for your response.
30
31 -m
32
33 --
34 gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] Questions about XML files used in portage Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@g.o>