[gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[Michał Górny]

Hi,

Many of Gentoo-originating packages are listing the main Gentoo site
as HOMEPAGE.  In my opinion, this is suboptimal (not to say 'useless').

I can think of a few uses for HOMEPAGE:

1. providing additional information about the package (before the user
chooses it),

2. providing easy access to (additional) documentation,

3. providing easy access to package sources,

4. providing easy access to bug reporting,

5. providing easy access to downloads.

A good HOMEPAGE is dedicated to the package in question, and makes it
easy to find all the stuff (and all other stuff the user might need).
The more effort user needs to put into finding what he needs, the worse
HOMEPAGE is.

Now, if I consider gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE for ~90 packages it
currently is, it's horribly bad.  I suppose that in some cases authors
meant to indicate that Gentoo is the package's upstream.  However, by
going to the main Gentoo site, it's *very hard* to find anything about
the package in question.

Just please select a totally random package from those listing
gentoo.org as HOMEPAGE, then go to gentoo.org and try to find either
of the points listed above.  If you click 'Downloads', you're certainly
not going to find anything relevant.  Through 'Support', you may
eventually find that tiny Bugzilla button at the bottom... and then try
to find the correct Product.  You may also find gitweb link somewhere,
and try to see if the project has a repo there.  Or maybe it's somewhere
else, or maybe it existed on somebody's devspace once.

My point is: gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE sucks.  Please use something more
specific instead.  Even link to gitweb would be more helpful because it
would at least be relevant to the package in question.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny