[maemo-developers] Software categories

[From: Marius Vollmer]

"ext Guillem Jover" <guillem.jover at nokia.com> writes:

> On Mon, 2007-08-13 at 17:17:41 +0100, Neil MacLeod wrote:
>> Guillem Jover wrote:
>> > On Mon, 2007-08-13 at 15:32:01 +0300, Eero Tamminen wrote:
>> > There's no cli section in Debian. But anyway, what you did is incorrect,
>> > as the Section from the '.deb' packages is not the authoritative
>> > source. The Section:s are overriden on the archive, so you should check
>> > from the Package metaindex files. «apt-cache show» is your friend.
>> 
>> $ apt-cache show ncurses-bin | grep -i cli
>> Section: user/cli
>
> Ah, I was talking about the Debian package. I find it disturbing that
> the Section:s are being modified on all those packages, this is useless
> divergence!

I agree.  I was thinking that only 'end user' programs that are
written specifically for maemo (or have been ported to it) would need
to be visible in the Application Manager.  Packages like ncurses-bin
should not be visible in the Application Manager and should keep their
Debian sections.

I guess people got confused about what the "Section: user/foo"
actually does and started thinking that a package needs to have it or
the Application Manager would refuse to install it at all.  People
don't seem to get it that packages that are automatically installed to
satisfy dependencies do _not_ have to have a "Section: user/foo"
field.

I guess this is the fault of my documentation, which is a bit terse in
this area.  I will improve it.

>> Any other suggestions as to how Application Manager is determining
>> what applications appear within each "button" in the "Browse
>> Installable applications" page?
>
> Right, currently it's using the Section, but personally I think that's
> a mistake, which I've told Marius several times, the proper solution is
> using tags.

Using tags instead of the section is just another implementation of
the same feature.  Had I used tags, we still would have to have a
special maemo specific tag that controls visibility in the AM, and
people would still be diverging from Debian.

But, tags are better than sections, and maybe it is easier to diverge
when using tags.  In any case, tags are more powerful and the AM
should clearly support them as well.