Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Chris Smith]

On Friday 15 August 2003 14:00, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> but now ive got it !  lets finally use metadata :)
> i propose we add a section, maybe call it <howto> or <postinstconfig> or
> something similar, or maybe have a few considering there are a few steps to
> take when properly using some packages ... plus we wouldnt have to worry
> about logging said informative output with some kludge that portage
> implements because the user missed the message as it flew by his screen in
> a multi-merge process ...
> we extend the use of '-h' in emerge ...

This is a really good idea. Also, over rsync, it only gets updated if it needs 
to be, and the one-off download is going to be tiny.

Lets see... say ~50 words per package, and about 4 chars per word, thats 200 
bytes per package. We now have ~6000 packages (as of the last GWN), so thats 
1,200,000 bytes, or ~1.14 MB. That is a very manageable number. Also, I 
imagine that every metadata.xml won't be updated at the same time, so it will 
be a staggered download.

The <howto> section could even include links to Gentoo (or just general) 
documentation! i.e. hardened-sources could point to the hardened gentoo 
project page. Perhaps even topics in the forum, or the mailing list, where 
users have documented useful info about the package.

Off on a tangent here, perhaps all of our information distributed via rsync, 
could be bzipped? I'm not familiar with rsync, or if it's anything like cvs 
(i.e. unable to handle binaries the way we want), but we could definately 
reduce the download times over rsync (something i've noticed, especially for 
the first rsync done on a system).

Well, better go before I get too far offtopic :o)

Cheers,
Chris.


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