Re: [gentoo-dev] New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[Tom Wijsman]

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 17:16:11 +0100
Dirkjan Ochtman <djc@g.o> wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 12:06 AM, Tom Wijsman <TomWij@g.o>
> wrote:
> > Currently, the MATE overlay has 14 meta-base packages and 16
> > mate-extra packages; this might slightly change when reconsidering
> > if their location is alright, however it is near the average (~15)
> > per category so that should be fit.

TL;DR: My avg was wrong, it is larger (110); but low (51) on *-base.

The average there was based on what I historically saw mentioned in
another new category thread, our categories seem to have grown since; I
didn't actually check it, but running the following command to check
out the actual average it seems that it is higher at ~110 packages.

`for d in $(find /usr/portage/ -maxdepth 1 -type d | grep -) ; do ls -1
${d} | wc -l ; done | awk '{sum+=$1}END{print sum/NR}'`

If we however do this on the -base packages (grep -- -base), we get ~51
packages as being the average; gnome-base for example has 41 packages.

> That seems a little on the small side? Can we just do a single
> category for all of it, instead? People can go bikeshed on the name.

TL;DR: Yes, we could try that; but what would be a consistent name?

Given these more correct statistics, that indeed seems rather small;
combining them, we indeed would get closer to a reasonable size for a
category. But its naming becomes way more tricky then.

The first thing that comes to mind is dropping the suffix; but then we
end up with just 'mate' which is inconsistent with how we name the rest.

Since introducing a suffix after 'mate' when grouping all packages
doesn't really make much sense, it might make more sense to make '-mate'
the suffix. But enumerating existing prefixes, I see none that makes
sense; see for yourself: app-mate, dev-mate, games-mate, gnome-mate,
gnustep-mate, gpe-mate, java-mate, kde-mate, lxde-mate, mail-mate,
media-mate, net-mate, perl-mate, razorqt-mate, rox-mate, sci-mate,
sec-mate, sys-mate, www-mate, x11-mate, xfce-mate

So, this makes me question why to go for an inconsistent naming; and if
we keep 'mate-base' then it feels wrong to move 'mate-extra' stuff in
there, so, I really wonder if the amount of packages matters that much.
Especially since I count at least 27 categories that are <= 20 pkgs:

`for d in $(find /usr/portage/ -maxdepth 1 -type d | grep -) ; do if
[[ $(ls -1 ${d} | wc -l) -le 20 ]] ; then echo ${d} ; fi ; done | wc -l`

Doing this again we see 43 categories that are <= 30 pkgs, that's like
a quarter of the Portage tree; it's representative to show that this is
uncommon, but not necessarily an actual exception.

It's indeed a recipe for bikeshedding; but I want to avoid this from
falling under a situation where there's no actual decision no which way
we proceed.

As I see it going forward:

 - If we agree on a consistent name for a single category, we pick that.

 - If we don't agree on a name for a single category, we see whether
   we want to agree on just having two categories to be consistent.

 - If we neither agree on the naming or two categories, I see myself
   forced to insert MATE packages across other existing categories; but
   I don't think people would be happy with that either.

Thank you in advance for further input on this.

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@g.o
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D