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On Thu, 2006-07-20 at 13:24 -0700, Brian Harring wrote: |
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> Not much experience then. Your use scenario above is "I'm looking |
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> for a package", not "I'm trying to find packages in category x". |
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> |
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> Of course categories don't matter to you in your case- you're not |
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> *using* them. What others are talking about how ever is folks who |
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> *are* using categories- say to see if any new packages were added to |
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> games-strategy. |
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Actually, this is a perfect example of categories working properly. |
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After all, if you like to play the occasional RPG, then games-rpg would |
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be where you'd want to look. Sure, some of them are graphical and |
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require X, meaning they *could* be in x11-apps, but that isn't what most |
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people would consider them first. That being said, if you were wanting, |
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say, Neverwinter Nights (nwn), then it is possible you wouldn't know |
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which category it resides in, and need to search for it. However, |
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saying that categories in portage are poorly implemented is pretty much |
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downplaying their usefulness. |
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If someone told me there's a bug in ipw2200, I might not know what that |
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would be. If someone told me there's a bug in net-wireless/ipw2200, I |
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definitely would know that it is some sort of wireless |
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driver/application. Sure, we all know that the categories in portage |
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aren't perfect, but they're pretty good, for most cases. |
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> > How to categorise is critical, if they are to have any meaning to |
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> > users. |
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> |
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> Even if a pkg is slightly miscategorized, it still is a fair bit more |
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> useful then having a flat namespace. |
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Agreed. |
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Let's look at something like dhcpcd. It resides in net-misc. Now, |
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without that category, who would know it has *anything* to do with |
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networking (assuming you don't know what DHCP is... :P)? Of course, |
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that isn't the best example, but it does show the point. |
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> > If you want to see if a package is in the tree, do you go |
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> > straight to it, or do you find yourself doing things like: |
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> > |
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> > ls -d /usr/portage/*/<packagename>* |
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> > |
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> > to find it? |
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> |
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> err... |
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> emerge -s <packagename> |
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> pquery <packagename> |
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> paludis -q <packagename> |
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> |
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> I'm honestly not really sure what point you're making there. |
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I find myself first doing "emerge $packagename" since that *usually* |
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works. ;] |
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After that, I'll resort to some method of searching. |
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-- |
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Chris Gianelloni |
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Release Engineering - Strategic Lead |
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x86 Architecture Team |
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Games - Developer |
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Gentoo Linux |
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