[gentoo-dev] New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[gentoo-dev] New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[Tom Wijsman]

Hello

The plan is to introduce MATE to the Portage tree next week; in order
to accomplish that, two new categories for MATE specific packages need
to be made. These categories would be named mate-base and mate-extra:

    mate-base: contains MATE specific packages that are either part of
    the main MATE DE or MATE specific libraries, and the meta package;

    mate-extra: contains extra MATE software by The MATE Team that is
    specific to the MATE desktop, or integrates with it; things that
    can work outside of the MATE DE (eg. GTK+ themes) are NOT part of
    this, as they fit in more specific categories (eg. x11-themes).

Currently, the MATE overlay has 14 meta-base packages and 16 mate-extra
packages; this might slightly change when reconsidering if their
location is alright, however it is near the average (~15) per category
so that should be fit.

When discussing this in the #gentoo-desktop; it was brought up by leio
that there are various other categories with *-base suffix, and some
categories do the *-extra suffix (gnome, rox and xfce). There are also
other categories that use a different suffix (kde-misc, gnustep-*).

Infirit (the overlay maintainer) highlights that they historically were
introduced to reflect the categories that were used by the GNOME team;
it makes as this a fork, so I think we should keep it similar to that.

As it is quite common it seems that mate-base would be fine; mate-extra
is up for discussion if anyone is interested and/or wants to see this
different, as to avoid pkgmoves.

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D

Re: [gentoo-dev] New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 12:06 AM, Tom Wijsman <TomWij@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Currently, the MATE overlay has 14 meta-base packages and 16 mate-extra
> packages; this might slightly change when reconsidering if their
> location is alright, however it is near the average (~15) per category
> so that should be fit.

That seems a little on the small side? Can we just do a single
category for all of it, instead? People can go bikeshed on the name.

Cheers,

Dirkjan

Re: [gentoo-dev] New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[Tom Wijsman]

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 17:16:11 +0100
Dirkjan Ochtman <djc@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 12:06 AM, Tom Wijsman <TomWij@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
> > Currently, the MATE overlay has 14 meta-base packages and 16
> > mate-extra packages; this might slightly change when reconsidering
> > if their location is alright, however it is near the average (~15)
> > per category so that should be fit.

TL;DR: My avg was wrong, it is larger (110); but low (51) on *-base.

The average there was based on what I historically saw mentioned in
another new category thread, our categories seem to have grown since; I
didn't actually check it, but running the following command to check
out the actual average it seems that it is higher at ~110 packages.

`for d in $(find /usr/portage/ -maxdepth 1 -type d | grep -) ; do ls -1
${d} | wc -l ; done | awk '{sum+=$1}END{print sum/NR}'`

If we however do this on the -base packages (grep -- -base), we get ~51
packages as being the average; gnome-base for example has 41 packages.

> That seems a little on the small side? Can we just do a single
> category for all of it, instead? People can go bikeshed on the name.

TL;DR: Yes, we could try that; but what would be a consistent name?

Given these more correct statistics, that indeed seems rather small;
combining them, we indeed would get closer to a reasonable size for a
category. But its naming becomes way more tricky then.

The first thing that comes to mind is dropping the suffix; but then we
end up with just 'mate' which is inconsistent with how we name the rest.

Since introducing a suffix after 'mate' when grouping all packages
doesn't really make much sense, it might make more sense to make '-mate'
the suffix. But enumerating existing prefixes, I see none that makes
sense; see for yourself: app-mate, dev-mate, games-mate, gnome-mate,
gnustep-mate, gpe-mate, java-mate, kde-mate, lxde-mate, mail-mate,
media-mate, net-mate, perl-mate, razorqt-mate, rox-mate, sci-mate,
sec-mate, sys-mate, www-mate, x11-mate, xfce-mate

So, this makes me question why to go for an inconsistent naming; and if
we keep 'mate-base' then it feels wrong to move 'mate-extra' stuff in
there, so, I really wonder if the amount of packages matters that much.
Especially since I count at least 27 categories that are <= 20 pkgs:

`for d in $(find /usr/portage/ -maxdepth 1 -type d | grep -) ; do if
[[ $(ls -1 ${d} | wc -l) -le 20 ]] ; then echo ${d} ; fi ; done | wc -l`

Doing this again we see 43 categories that are <= 30 pkgs, that's like
a quarter of the Portage tree; it's representative to show that this is
uncommon, but not necessarily an actual exception.

It's indeed a recipe for bikeshedding; but I want to avoid this from
falling under a situation where there's no actual decision no which way
we proceed.

As I see it going forward:

 - If we agree on a consistent name for a single category, we pick that.

 - If we don't agree on a name for a single category, we see whether
   we want to agree on just having two categories to be consistent.

 - If we neither agree on the naming or two categories, I see myself
   forced to insert MATE packages across other existing categories; but
   I don't think people would be happy with that either.

Thank you in advance for further input on this.

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D

[gentoo-dev] Re: New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[Duncan]

Tom Wijsman posted on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 18:08:24 +0100 as excerpted:

>> That seems a little on the small side? Can we just do a single category
>> for all of it, instead? People can go bikeshed on the name.
> 
> TL;DR: Yes, we could try that; but what would be a consistent name?

mate-desktop ?

(The mate-base and mate-extra split seems more consistent with the rest 
of the tree to me, and around a dozen packages each seems fine, but if 
it's to be a single category, mate-desktop seems reasonable.  Or desktop-
mate, or mate-dt...)

Regardless, thanks for bringing mate to gentoo. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[Tom Wijsman]

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 17:33:57 +0000 (UTC)
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:

> Tom Wijsman posted on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 18:08:24 +0100 as excerpted:
> 
> >> That seems a little on the small side? Can we just do a single
> >> category for all of it, instead? People can go bikeshed on the
> >> name.
> > 
> > TL;DR: Yes, we could try that; but what would be a consistent name?
> 
> mate-desktop ?

While still inconsistent with what already exists, that indeed sounds
sane towards the user, +1; does someone object 'mate-desktop'?

> (The mate-base and mate-extra split seems more consistent with the
> rest of the tree to me, and around a dozen packages each seems fine,
> but if it's to be a single category, mate-desktop seems reasonable.
> Or desktop- mate, or mate-dt...)

(Or do we want a consistent 'mate-base' / 'mate-extra' approach?)

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Tom Wijsman <TomWij@gentoo.org> wrote:
> While still inconsistent with what already exists, that indeed sounds
> sane towards the user, +1; does someone object 'mate-desktop'?

I was thinking mate-de, but -desktop seems okay, too.

Anyway, you should probably give people some time to voice their
objections before you go into action mode.

Cheers,

Dirkjan

[gentoo-dev] Re: New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[Michael Palimaka]

On 02/23/2014 05:02 AM, Tom Wijsman wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 17:33:57 +0000 (UTC)
> Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> 
>> Tom Wijsman posted on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 18:08:24 +0100 as excerpted:
>>
>>>> That seems a little on the small side? Can we just do a single
>>>> category for all of it, instead? People can go bikeshed on the
>>>> name.
>>>
>>> TL;DR: Yes, we could try that; but what would be a consistent name?
>>
>> mate-desktop ?
> 
> While still inconsistent with what already exists, that indeed sounds
> sane towards the user, +1; does someone object 'mate-desktop'?
> 
>> (The mate-base and mate-extra split seems more consistent with the
>> rest of the tree to me, and around a dozen packages each seems fine,
>> but if it's to be a single category, mate-desktop seems reasonable.
>> Or desktop- mate, or mate-dt...)
> 
> (Or do we want a consistent 'mate-base' / 'mate-extra' approach?)
> 
I personally prefer the base/extra approach for consistency and
segregation reasons.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: New categories: mate-base and mate-extra

[Andreas K. Huettel]

Am Samstag, 22. Februar 2014, 19:02:54 schrieb Tom Wijsman:
> On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 17:33:57 +0000 (UTC)
> 
> 
> (Or do we want a consistent 'mate-base' / 'mate-extra' approach?)

If there is a clear distinction between a core set of packages and extra stuff 
(as in e.g. kde4), the combination mate-base / mate-extra would probably be 
best.

-- 
Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer (council, kde)
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/