Re: [gentoo-dev] Categories

[Rolf Veen <rolf.veen@helide.com>]

George Shapovalov wrote:
> Ok, this seems to be pretty much it, at least from what I remember
> being mentioned on this topic. Again, if anybody thinks I ommitted
> something, please stand up and mention it :).

Namespace orthogonal to categories.

Categories change, as packages are being added; if a category has more
that N (lets say 50, for example) entries it looses its usefullness.
While browsing for packages it is natural to have some level of depth;
two or tree levels of categories should be ok. Also a package can fit
into more that one category. Let categories be a graph. A symlink
hierarchy, for example.

But since categories are variable and somewhat arbitrary, don't let
the basic system, the core algorithms, depend on them. So take a flat
namespace for packages, resolving name conficts in the download (url
to local dir) phase, adding the necesary information to the ebuild.

Concluding, have a flat namespace for machine interaction, and an
arbitrarily complicated category graph on top of that for user
interaction.

Well, it's an opinion.
Rolf.


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list