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

[From: Niels Breet]

-- to the list too this time..
>
>> 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
>

I stand corrected. We might want to cross link between them?

> 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?
>

You are right in that there will always be a category which is not
suitable for your specific application. But we can at least try to get it
better than  what we have now. Most of the applications available are
created by the community, they should have a say in this. This really
isn't a task that needs to be done by Nokia alone.

>
> 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).
>

I think we can try to work towards policy. Let's start with a wiki page
and see if we can create some list. We can create a policy and see how it
works in practice. After a while we can evaluate it and see if we can
better it.

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

I think that is a good idea.
>
> 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.

This is another project we are working on, more on that soon.

> 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).

This would be an elegant solution, although we would need to see if we can
make that finger friendly too :)

- Niels