[gentoo-dev] Re: new categories:

[Steve Long]

Denis Dupeyron wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 11:47 AM, George Shapovalov <george@g.o>
> wrote:
>> Besides, in my opinion, the ability to see "what's there" in at least
>> minimally categorized way without having to resort to using some special
>> tools or going to some website is worht something. In this vain I was
>> proposing going the opposite direction - to allow arbitrary nesting of
>> categories, like going sci-math -> sci/math and deeper (then packages
>> would naturally be specified by "FQEN" - fully qualified ebuild names).
>> Its not like tree walker would be the most complex part of code in
>> portage..
>
> Actually we'd want both tags and nesting. They don't address the same
> issue.
>
> Arbitrary nesting of categories allows better management and storing
> of ebuilds. It could also allow a meta-ebuild to depend on a whole
> subcategory to ease maintenance of said meta-ebuild. It's more a
> developer's feature.
>
That sounds very similar to sets? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious,
but I thought sets were used with kde4; if they are unavailable to the
ebuild author, perhaps a suitably-defined extension (for in-tree sets)
might be useful?
The obvious advantage being that they are not tied to a specific category,
ofc; could you expand a bit on 'better management and storing'?

> Tags allow ebuilds to appear as being pertinent to more
> (sub-)categories than just the one they're stored into. It may help
> some of us locate packages they need in a better and/or faster way.
> It's more of a user's feature.
>
Tags sound cool. I'm opposed to losing the current single flat category
schema, fwtw, unless it enables something majorly-useful. It's *way* better
than other distros (I am deadset against losing all categorisation) and
still nice and immediate.