Re: [Fwd: Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions]

[Sven Vermeulen]

On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 02:22:56PM -0700, Spundun Bhatt wrote:
[...]
> This is the thing I'd like to see in a Linux distribution. Say, XMMS could be
> in sound/player, with keywords "mp3", "ogg", "mod" and "s3m". Probably it'd
> also have some property that would identify it as a Gtk app. Konqueror,
> Mozilla, Netscape, Opera would all be in web/browser
>
> Ideally, this is how things would work:
> $ emerge search mp3 player
> Searching...
>
> sound/player/noatun:
>    environment: KDE
>    keywords: mp3 ogg
>
> sound/player/xmms:
>    environment: Gnome
>    keywords: mp3 ogg mod s3m
>
> sound/player/mp3blaster:
>   environment: command line
>   keywords: mp3 ogg
>
> Recommended packages:
>   [checks if the dependencies of any packages are already installed]
>   noatun, mp3blaster

Now this is something I'm fully in favor of. It doesn't require much
additional data to be added to each ebuild (which is the case for long
descriptions) and it is sure as hell very handy.

However, there is at least one fallback: the current Portage implementation
is too slow to handle quick searches for keywords. Or the keywords need to be
centralized or we step away from the current ebuild implementation and go
into databaseformat or a hybrid solution. This is however a long-term vision;
perhaps we should first focus on more important things :)

	Sven Vermeulen
	Gentoo Documentation
-- 
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