[gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Vadim]

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I think that Gentoo needs some better way of describing packages. For example, 
on Debian there is a short and a long description, which will almost always 
explain what's the package for.

Gentoo seems to have gems like this, though:
*  net-print/apsfilter
      Latest version available: 7.2.2
      Latest version installed: 7.2.2
      Size of downloaded files: 281 kB
      Homepage:    http://www.apsfilter.org
      Description: Apsfilter Prints So Fine, It Leads To Extraordinary Results

And this one is not as bad but still not good:
*  net-fs/samba
      Latest version available: 2.2.8a
      Latest version installed: 2.2.8a
      Size of downloaded files: 4,466 kB
      Homepage:    http://www.samba.org
      Description: SAMBA is a suite of SMB and CIFS client/server programs for 
UNIX


Okay, I realize that Gentoo isn't indended for newbies, but it's hard not to 
complain about that. I've been using computers for about 10 years, and Linux 
for maybe 3. And I have problems with both packages.

I simply don't know what the heck does apsfilter do. Yeah, it prints, but 
what? Does it use CUPS or it's generic? If I install it, will I get more 
features in the KDE printing dialog, or it's invoked manually? If it "prints" 
maybe it's a printer driver? I have no idea. Note that even though the text 
above says I installed it, I did it just in case, and planning to figure out 
if it was useful or not later.

About the same can be said for SAMBA. I know what it is, but I doubt I could 
find it if I was searching for it without knowing what it's called. Where are 
the references to the network (other than net-fs), Windows and file sharing? 
I'm pretty sure that there are quite a few Windows admins that have no idea 
of that the protocol is called SMB.


My suggestion is to make a policy that says that package descriptions have to 
be actually descriptive. The apsfilter description may be "cute", but it's 
completely unhelpful at describing its purpose, or even allowing it to be 
found easily with 'emerge -S'.

I think it would also be a good idea to add longer descriptions, like those 
that .deb and .rpm packages have.
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[oford]

You *could* chase the URL.  That is the long description. :)

./Owen

On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 13:12, Vadim wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> I think that Gentoo needs some better way of describing packages. For example, 
> on Debian there is a short and a long description, which will almost always 
> explain what's the package for.
> 
> Gentoo seems to have gems like this, though:
> *  net-print/apsfilter
>       Latest version available: 7.2.2
>       Latest version installed: 7.2.2
>       Size of downloaded files: 281 kB
>       Homepage:    http://www.apsfilter.org
>       Description: Apsfilter Prints So Fine, It Leads To Extraordinary Results
> 
> And this one is not as bad but still not good:
> *  net-fs/samba
>       Latest version available: 2.2.8a
>       Latest version installed: 2.2.8a
>       Size of downloaded files: 4,466 kB
>       Homepage:    http://www.samba.org
>       Description: SAMBA is a suite of SMB and CIFS client/server programs for 
> UNIX
> 
> 
> Okay, I realize that Gentoo isn't indended for newbies, but it's hard not to 
> complain about that. I've been using computers for about 10 years, and Linux 
> for maybe 3. And I have problems with both packages.
> 
> I simply don't know what the heck does apsfilter do. Yeah, it prints, but 
> what? Does it use CUPS or it's generic? If I install it, will I get more 
> features in the KDE printing dialog, or it's invoked manually? If it "prints" 
> maybe it's a printer driver? I have no idea. Note that even though the text 
> above says I installed it, I did it just in case, and planning to figure out 
> if it was useful or not later.
> 
> About the same can be said for SAMBA. I know what it is, but I doubt I could 
> find it if I was searching for it without knowing what it's called. Where are 
> the references to the network (other than net-fs), Windows and file sharing? 
> I'm pretty sure that there are quite a few Windows admins that have no idea 
> of that the protocol is called SMB.
> 
> 
> My suggestion is to make a policy that says that package descriptions have to 
> be actually descriptive. The apsfilter description may be "cute", but it's 
> completely unhelpful at describing its purpose, or even allowing it to be 
> found easily with 'emerge -S'.
> 
> I think it would also be a good idea to add longer descriptions, like those 
> that .deb and .rpm packages have.
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> =F7tk
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> 
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
-- 
oford <oford@ev1.net>


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Dhruba Bandopadhyay]

On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 19:12, Vadim wrote:
> I think that Gentoo needs some better way of describing packages. For example, 
> I think it would also be a good idea to add longer descriptions, like those 

It's a nice idea.  On the theme of metadata that runs throughout the
entire distribution however there is a common argument against it. The
current information points the user to the package homepage which is
considered as the most uptodate and proficient resource of that
information.  This also prevents information duplication and the need to
maintain it.


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[John Robinson]

On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 14:31, Dhruba Bandopadhyay wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 19:12, Vadim wrote:
> > I think that Gentoo needs some better way of describing packages. For example, 
> > I think it would also be a good idea to add longer descriptions, like those 
> 
> It's a nice idea.  On the theme of metadata that runs throughout the
> entire distribution however there is a common argument against it. The
> current information points the user to the package homepage which is
> considered as the most uptodate and proficient resource of that
> information.  This also prevents information duplication and the need to
> maintain it.

While I agree that maintenance is a good thing to keep to a minumum, the
description of a package isn't something that changes much (if ever)
over its life, so I don't think that should pose too much of an issue.
And the information duplication in this case serves a purpose: it means
that I don't have to look up a webpage. If I'm looking for a text editor
in Portage, I don't want to browse 10 web pages just to get a basic idea
of the differences between the options. If information duplication saves
that amount of time, and doesn't significantly add to the maintenance
overhead, I say go for it.

- John Robinson

-- 

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Seemant Kulleen]

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Heh.

This has come up before.  Karltk and I had a conversation about it, not too long ago.  In fact, Daniel and I discussed this as well.  The short descriptions do need to be cleaned up and be of a certain length.  The long descriptions, well, there's an interesting way too look at it.  For anyone in the #gentoo channels, you'll see every now and then, that I'll have some big output about a description.  Basically, it is a script which looks something up at freshmeat.net and then returns that description.  Granted, this will not work for many of the packages in portage, but for most of the free/open ones a dynamic freshmeat lookup can be done (and then cached).  Of course, if a box is offline, then there are other considerations.  My point is, the majority of the long descriptions really do not need to be written.

My 3 dollars,

-- 
Seemant Kulleen
Developer and Project Co-ordinator,
Gentoo Linux					http://www.gentoo.org/~seemant

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Spundun Bhatt]

>From my experience so far with gentoo... I have a feedback. 
A couple of times I wished the categories were more specific, Once I was
looking for a juke box.. I wished I could search for all the sw simlar
to xmms. And the other time it was sound editing rosegarden like
software. Most of the time I am just curious how many varieties in a
perticular app category are available... a catagory like gams could
definately use it.
Hope this helpls
Spundun
On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 11:31, Dhruba Bandopadhyay wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 19:12, Vadim wrote:
> > I think that Gentoo needs some better way of describing packages. For example, 
> > I think it would also be a good idea to add longer descriptions, like those 
> 
> It's a nice idea.  On the theme of metadata that runs throughout the
> entire distribution however there is a common argument against it. The
> current information points the user to the package homepage which is
> considered as the most uptodate and proficient resource of that
> information.  This also prevents information duplication and the need to
> maintain it.
> 
> 
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 08:12:03PM +0200, Vadim wrote:
> I think that Gentoo needs some better way of describing packages. 
[...]
> I simply don't know what the heck does apsfilter do. Yeah, it prints, but 
> what? Does it use CUPS or it's generic? If I install it, will I get more 
> features in the KDE printing dialog, or it's invoked manually? If it "prints" 
> maybe it's a printer driver? 

This is why you also get the URL, so you can find out for yourself. I'm not
in favor of adding a "long" description as other package formats do, although
I won't object -- this is just my personal opinion.

Wkr,
	Sven Vermeulen

-- 
Thanks to DRM, you know that something has been built in environment of 
unspecified degree of security, from source you cannot check, written by 
programmers you don't know, released after passing QA of unknown quality and 
which is released under a license that disclaims any responsibility...

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Dylan Carlson]

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On Thu May 22 2003 2:34 pm, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
>
> This is why you also get the URL, so you can find out for yourself. I'm
> not in favor of adding a "long" description as other package formats do,
> although I won't object -- this is just my personal opinion.
>

I'm glad someone else brought it up.  And since it's been mentioned, I want 
to say I support the idea of a long description.   The short descriptions 
should be under a fixed number of characters, and the long-descriptions 
should be allowed as many characters as needed to describe the package 
completely.   

And some packages do in fact need a lot of explanation.  The existing 
DESCRIPTION metadata is not sufficient, and ebuild comments nor ChangeLog 
entries are adequate for this.

It's one area that *BSD ports have an advantage (imo).

Cheers,
Dylan Carlson

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 22 May 2003 20:56, Dylan Carlson wrote:
> On Thu May 22 2003 2:34 pm, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> > This is why you also get the URL, so you can find out for yourself. I'm
> > not in favor of adding a "long" description as other package formats do,
> > although I won't object -- this is just my personal opinion.
>
> I'm glad someone else brought it up.  And since it's been mentioned, I want
> to say I support the idea of a long description.   The short descriptions
> should be under a fixed number of characters, and the long-descriptions
> should be allowed as many characters as needed to describe the package
> completely.
>
> And some packages do in fact need a lot of explanation.  The existing
> DESCRIPTION metadata is not sufficient, and ebuild comments nor ChangeLog
> entries are adequate for this.
>
> It's one area that *BSD ports have an advantage (imo).

My biggest point against long descriptions is the fact they need to be 
written. That is not such a big point if the users will do it. I do think 
though that a description file might be more appropriate than putting the 
long description in the ebuild. A package description should always be the 
same I feel, even over versions.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Researcher
Mail: pauldv@cs.kun.nl
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Dylan Carlson]

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On Thu May 22 2003 3:02 pm, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
>
> My biggest point against long descriptions is the fact they need to be
> written. That is not such a big point if the users will do it. I do
> think though that a description file might be more appropriate than
> putting the long description in the ebuild. A package description should
> always be the same I feel, even over versions.
>

Maybe they don't have to be written.  They can be optional.  In the 
presence of it, it's displayed, if not, fine.

I don't see that we have to require the field.

Cheers,
Dylan Carlson

Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 22 May 2003 21:11, Dylan Carlson wrote:
> Maybe they don't have to be written.  They can be optional.  In the
> presence of it, it's displayed, if not, fine.
>
> I don't see that we have to require the field.
>

I agree. If we use a separate DESCRIPTION file we could also download many of 
the descriptions from fm.net as seemant suggested.

Paul

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Researcher
Mail: pauldv@cs.kun.nl
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Frantz Dhin]

On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 21:02, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> My biggest point against long descriptions is the fact they need to be 
> written. That is not such a big point if the users will do it. I do think 
> though that a description file might be more appropriate than putting the 
> long description in the ebuild. A package description should always be the 
> same I feel, even over versions.
> 
> Paul

I suppose other distributions such as Mandrake wont mind us borrowing
their usually nice descriptions?
I'm all for a long description, and I don't think it will take a lot of
resources to implement.
-F


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[leon j. breedt]

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On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 09:02:36PM +0200, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> My biggest point against long descriptions is the fact they need to be 
> written. That is not such a big point if the users will do it. I do think 
> though that a description file might be more appropriate than putting the 
> long description in the ebuild. A package description should always be the 
> same I feel, even over versions.
oh come on! during my stint as a developer for a Linux distribution that
shall not be named, writing the long description was very little work
indeed.

keeping the packages bug free took up way more time. i don't think the
time taken to write a long description is a valid point against it.

that said, I'm not sure how much use a long description would be to me.
the DESCRIPTION, along with the category/group, give me enough of a
context to be able to fill in the blanks for most ebuilds.  the only
time I've actually read the description on other distributions was when
browsing using a GUI tool :)

leon

- -- 
in the beginning, was the code.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Matt Tucker]

-- "leon j. breedt" <ljb@neverborn.org> spake thusly:

> that said, I'm not sure how much use a long description would be to
> me. the DESCRIPTION, along with the category/group, give me enough of
> a context to be able to fill in the blanks for most ebuilds.  the only
> time I've actually read the description on other distributions was
> when browsing using a GUI tool :)

Keep in mind that another thing long descriptions are good for (as
Vadim pointed out in the original post) is something else to search
against. For instance, if I wanted to find something that plays
quicktime movies, I might search against 'quicktime'. Doing this on
Gentoo yields:

    libquicktime, openquicktime, quicktime4linux

which isn't really all that useful. If I search against the
description, (which takes far, FAR too long -- almost 2 minutes -- this
data really needs to be indexed), I get:

    libquicktime, openquicktime, quicktime4linux, xanim-export, xmovie

On Debian, I get:

    quicktime-x11utils, libquicktime1, xawtv-plugin-qt,
    libquicktime-dev, xmovie, dv-utils, dvgrab, xanim-modules,
    xawtv, xine-ui, kino, libxine1, libxine-dev, camstream,
    xanim, gnome-xine,

which shows quite a bit more, including a player that's worth using.
Sure, you could suggest that I formulate a better search, but often
this requires extra knowledge that a user may not have.

I recall that when I was running Debian and wanted to find a package
that did something I needed, I'd do 'apt-cache search'. On Gentoo I
usually end up going to Freshmeat or Google to find the package, and
then check to see whether there's an ebuild for it. This is not, in my
opinion, an ideal situation. It's particularly frustratring when just
getting started on Gentoo and trying to find all those tools you're
used to.


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 01:59:31PM -0700, Matt Tucker wrote:
> Keep in mind that another thing long descriptions are good for (as
> Vadim pointed out in the original post) is something else to search
> against. 

I'd rather not have to grep the output of the search command because it
yields useless results as apt-cache search does. Imho the short description
should be enough to know what a package is for. 

Wkr,
	Sven Vermeulen
	Gentoo Documentation

-- 
Thanks to DRM, you know that something has been built in environment of 
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programmers you don't know, released after passing QA of unknown quality and 
which is released under a license that disclaims any responsibility...

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Matthew Kennedy]

Sven Vermeulen <swift@gentoo.org> writes:

> On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 08:12:03PM +0200, Vadim wrote:
>> I think that Gentoo needs some better way of describing packages. 
> [...]
>> I simply don't know what the heck does apsfilter do. Yeah, it prints, but 
>> what? Does it use CUPS or it's generic? If I install it, will I get more 
>> features in the KDE printing dialog, or it's invoked manually? If it "prints" 
>> maybe it's a printer driver? 
>
> This is why you also get the URL, so you can find out for yourself. I'm not
> in favor of adding a "long" description as other package formats do, although
> I won't object -- this is just my personal opinion.

I think thats just an excuse.  Many ebuilds in there have little in
the way of an upstream webpage.  You cannot assume the URL will have
more information about the package.

Matt

-- 
Matthew Kennedy
Gentoo Linux Developer

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Matthew Kennedy]

Sven Vermeulen <swift@gentoo.org> writes:

> On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 08:12:03PM +0200, Vadim wrote:
>> I think that Gentoo needs some better way of describing packages. 
> [...]
>> I simply don't know what the heck does apsfilter do. Yeah, it prints, but 
>> what? Does it use CUPS or it's generic? If I install it, will I get more 
>> features in the KDE printing dialog, or it's invoked manually? If it "prints" 
>> maybe it's a printer driver? 
>
> This is why you also get the URL, so you can find out for yourself. I'm not
> in favor of adding a "long" description as other package formats do, although
> I won't object -- this is just my personal opinion.

Actually, in addition to my last post, I can see that maintaining a
long description in portage will increase the size of your portage
download considerably.  I suppose that would need to be considered as
well.

-- 
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Gentoo Linux Developer

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 22 May 2003 21:19, Matthew Kennedy wrote:
> Actually, in addition to my last post, I can see that maintaining a
> long description in portage will increase the size of your portage
> download considerably.  I suppose that would need to be considered as
> well.

If the descriptions where in their own files (they should hardly change) it 
should not be a big problem. We could even compress them.

Paul

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Mail: pauldv@cs.kun.nl
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Vadim]

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On Thursday 22 May 2003 20:34, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> This is why you also get the URL, so you can find out for yourself. I'm not
> in favor of adding a "long" description as other package formats do,
> although I won't object -- this is just my personal opinion.

Sure, that sometimes works. But not always. I can think of multiple problems
with that. For example:

That assumes that the web site says something useful about it. It might be a
site from somebody who just put his/her stuff on the web in case somebody
find it useful, with no documentation at all. Or it might happen to be some
obscure tiny tool made by a large company that's got a huge site where you
have to search for 15 minutes until your find something.

Sometimes, you have network problems too. The site might be down. Or have
moved somewhere else. Or perhaps you have a local Gentoo mirror and no
internet connection due to problems/paranoid security.

Then, there is a problem with searching. I'd like to be able to find SAMBA
without knowing how it, or the protocol is called. Most people might try to
search for "windows network", for example. The URL is not very helpful when
you know what kind of tool you want, but not the exact tool.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[Ernst Herzberg]

On Freitag, 23. Mai 2003 00:06, Vadim wrote:

> Sure, that sometimes works. But not always. I can think of multiple
> problems with that. For example:
>
> That assumes that the web site says something useful about it. It might
> be a site from somebody who just put his/her stuff on the web in case
> somebody find it useful, with no documentation at all. Or it might
> happen to be some obscure tiny tool made by a large company that's got a
> huge site where you have to search for 15 minutes until your find
> something.
>
> Sometimes, you have network problems too. The site might be down. Or
> have moved somewhere else. Or perhaps you have a local Gentoo mirror and
> no internet connection due to problems/paranoid security.
>
> Then, there is a problem with searching. I'd like to be able to find
> SAMBA without knowing how it, or the protocol is called. Most people
> might try to search for "windows network", for example. The URL is not
> very helpful when you know what kind of tool you want, but not the exact
> tool.

Put the long descriptions in a separate package, like a gentoo description 
database. If somebody need it, he can emerge it. Then the portage tree 
will not grow because of the long descriptions, and you can split the 
descrition database for example in pieces, so you dont have to download 
the complete database if one package description changes. 
If emerge -S find such a database, it will search that too, if not, then 
not ;-)

If somebody even has enough sparetime, this package can be easy extended, 
for example to search also a database on the net..

... only thinking....

<Earny>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Horrible package descriptions

[John Nilsson]

Why discuss ebuild features at all in this case?

Problem: People cant find a packet that suits thier needs.

Solution: A search engine.

Availible engines: google, source forge, freshmeat

The solution I would want to see is a gentoo wiki. The best example beeing
susning.nu (swedish).
If a cli tool is required see Lynx. It is by far the best information front
end availible to cli.
/John


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