[maemo-developers] [RFC] Maemo package guidelines: mandatory categories

[From: Marius Vollmer]

"ext Niels Breet" <maemo at breet.com> writes:

>> There is, http://hildon-app-mgr.garage.maemo.org/packaging-stable.html:
>>
>
> Ok, we need to get this in the official documentation. I don't think many
> developers will find it there! 

True.  I just quoted that document because I knew where it was.

>At least it is not listed here:
> http://maemo.org/development/documentation/how-tos/4-x/creating_a_debian_package.html

It's here as well:

http://maemo.org/development/documentation/how-tos/4-x/making_application_packages.html

>> [concrete list of categories]
>
> Do we need more categories? I think this is not enough for all
> applications.
>
>> [how to use categories that are not in the list]
>
> I think this is bad. This is how we ended up with the mess we are in now.
>
> We need to come up with an official list and don't allow new categories to
> be created unless the community feels it is needed.

I am sure you notice the conflict here: whatever list you come up with
will be unsuitable for someone.  You want strict policy enforcement,
based on community 'feelings'.  How can that work?


One approach in a situation where consensus is clearly beneficial is to
make a first shot at a concrete policy that everybody is supposed to
follow, but make it possible to deviate from that policy in practice.
At the same time, make it possible for people to improve policy
compliance by doing concrete work (i.e., enable them to fix
non-compliant things).

That way, you end up with the people willing to put in the effort to be
the ones who define the policy.


In this concrete case, it would mean to give to whoever wants it the
ability to centrally override the categories used by the packages in the
maemo Extras repositories, and maybe also the ability to block entry
into these repositories based on the categories they use.


There is more to this, of course, like pushing people more to actually
use maemo Extras for their packages in the first place, and reducing the
need for new categories.  For example, "Pidgin" might want a category of
its own since it has many related packages that would otherwise be
scattered all over the place.  We could maybe improve the Application
manager UI to make this a non-issue by grouping related packages in
other ways (say, installing Pidgin gives a list with checkboxes where
you can select additional components, based on the Recommends and
Suggests fields of a package).  Fixing the Application manager to get
category translations from the repositories, say.  Controlling the whole
application browsing experience from the repository server, by pushing
some HTML/CSS/etc to the Application manager that just shows it using a
web runtime.  Using PackageKit.  Etc.

Lot's of room for improvement...