How important is comps.xml to us these days? Which packages should be in comps.xml and which not?

[Alex Lancaster]

>>>>> "TL" == Thorsten Leemhuis  writes:

TL> On 21.09.2008 23:33, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>> Tim Lauridsen <tim.lauridsen <at> googlemail.com> writes: [...]
>> IMHO, a much better approach would be to: * throw out the hardcoded
>> categories! We have that information in comps.xml, PackageKit
>> should not try to duplicate it.  * display the comps.xml groups
>> instead of the hardcoded categories and * add tristate checkboxes
>> next to the groups, like in Anaconda: by default, they're in the
>> gray state, unless you have all packages installed (checked) or
>> none (unchecked); they can be checked or unchecked, which is
>> equivalent to a groupinstall or groupremove, but the only way to
>> get them into the gray state is to individually install or remove
>> packages from the group (using the list view on the right).

TL> Strong +1 with one addition for us:

TL> * Fedora and its package maintainers need to way better job making
TL> sure that most if not all packages are properly listed in
TL> comps.xml -- otherwise a good portion of our packages won't show
TL> up in any of the groups

Ideally this would be done either as a mandatory part of the original
CVS import request (a field could be added, with an opt-out provision
if really not appropriate for comps), or added interactively by the
maintainer via PackageDB as I suggested in the feature request here:

https://fedorahosted.org/packagedb/ticket/78#comment:1

Having to manually update the comps.xml file for multiple releases is
painful, error-prone and probably why most package maintainers ignore
it, especially since it is not enforced in package reviews.

Alex