rpm groups and fedora: a modest proposal

[Panu Matilainen]

On Wed, 26 May 2004, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le mar, 25/05/2004 à 16:57 -0400, Matthew Miller a écrit :
> 
> > But that's not my suggestion. I think Group has become too ugly to be
> > properly saved. Applications like synaptic should instead use the comps file
> > groups for organizational purposes. 
> 
> Comps is totally unsuitable since it limits you to whatever packages
> where known to the distribution at the time of its release. (ie bye bye
> third-party packages).

Seconded, I seriously hate the idea of *having* to edit some xml file just 
to place a random rpm into some category. 

> 
> Like for spec file i18n we need a solution that permits standalone
> self-contained packages. Anything else will sort-of work with RedHat and
> be rejected by anyone else.
> 
> Now if you want mon opinion on rpm organisation, a mix of a Keywords
> in-spec field (Matches: java, games, x11) and external group
> declarations (external group descriptors, including user-provided group
> overlays and perhaps grouping policy files) is the way to go. Really
> this is much the same problem as menu building for example.

Sounds a whole lot like debtags to me :) Check out
http://deb-usability.alioth.debian.org/debtags/ (I'm not familiar with how 
it's actually implemented in Debian but that's pretty much irrelevant) 
And yes I would like to have such a system in rpm as well.

	- Panu -