Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] parser friendly package.mask comments

[Michał Górny]

On Mon, 2021-01-18 at 23:47 +0100, Jonas Stein wrote:
> Hi,
>
> it would be nice to have parser friendly comments in package.mask
>
> The new format
> - must be as easy to read and write for humans as it is now.
> - must be structured
>
>
>
> Benefits of a parser friendly package.mask:
>
> - use it for statistics
> - list all packages which are overdue
> - pretty print a sorted list
> - use syntax highlighting and folding in editors
> - better pkgcheck/repoman checks for malformed masks
> - automatic nice and readable commit messages
> - get even more out of the mgorny-dev-scripts
> https://github.com/mgorny/mgorny-dev-scripts/blob/master/lr-add-pmask
> - all items have the same structure
> - # Removal after: 2021-09-01 is easier to read than
>    # Masked for removal in 90 days.
>
>
> Example workflow on the command line
>
> $> lr-add-pmask app-misc/some-package 987654 2019-07-01 "Doesn't work
> with new libfoo. Upstream dead, gtk-1, smells all commented lines after
> Reason are the reason."
>
> $> lr-commit-pmask
>
>
>
>
> OLD FORMAT
>
> # Dev E. Loper <developer@g.o> (2019-07-01)
> # Masked for removal in 90 days.  Doesn't work
> # with new libfoo. Upstream dead, gtk-1, smells
> # funny. (bug #987654). Others write Bug 123456.
> # Bug 1 is known well, but the second bug 2 hours to fix.
> app-misc/some-package
>
>
> Add your suggestions below for discussion:
>
>
> Suggestion 1)
>
> # Masked on: 2019-07-01
> # Masked by: Dev E. Loper <developer@g.o>
> # Removal after: 2019-09-01
> # Bugs: 123456, 123457
> # Reason: Doesn't work with new libfoo. Upstream dead, gtk-1, smells
> # all commented lines after Reason are the reason.
> app-misc/some-package
>
>
> Suggestion 2)
> # MASKED ON: 2019-07-01
> # MASKED BY: Dev E. Loper <developer@g.o>
> # REMOVAL AFTER: 2019-09-01
> # BUGS: 123456 123457
> # REASON: Doesn't work with new libfoo. Upstream dead, gtk-1, smells
> # all commented lines after Reason are the reason. Uppercase to
> # emphasize keywords.
> app-misc/some-package
>
>
>
> Suggestion 3)
> write your suggestion HERE
>
> How can we improve the format of package.mask for future scripts?
> Which suggestion is your preference?

I don't like the idea of splitting bugnos and reason.  It generally
makes sense to link a specific part reason to a specific bug.

The first line is well-defined by now and I don't think it needs
changing, and the new format looks much longer than necessary.

I think just putting the removal date in plain
'removal (after|on) YYYY-MM-DD' format would be improvement enough. 
Bugnos are rather easy to grep.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny