[Modules]Proposal of minimal module metainfo

goran.hultgren at bluefish.se goran.hultgren at bluefish.se
Mon Feb 18 17:08:11 UTC 2002


Henrik Gedenryd <h.gedenryd at open.ac.uk> wrote:
> goran.hultgren at bluefish.se wrote:
> 
> > Homepage: Url 
> > to homepage of module if applicable.
> 
> This is redundant--the module path is automatically translated into an
> actual path. So we don't need this.

I was talking about a web homepage for the module. Of course this is not
applicable
to #(Squeak Language Collections) but it is for #(Squeak People gohu
sqcvs).

> >License: Url to license. Mandatory.
> 
> I suggest Squeak-L as default, unless another one is explicitly given.
> Hopefully almost no one will specify one then!

Sure. :-)
 
> > Author: Name and email according to mail standard (like "Henrik Gedenryd
> > <h.gedenryd at open.ac.uk>") Maintainer: Name and email according to mail
> > standard. Mandatory. Keywords: A bunch of keywords mostly for better
> > searching ---
> 
> > Question: Should this information be mandatory for all standalone modules? I
> > would think so.
> > 
> > NOTE: This is the proposed MINIMAL info. Dependencies etc. are already
> > covered in the module. Even though I would consider adding a few other
> > relations between modules like for example "Conflicts with" and "Replaces"
> > (inspired again by Debian). But that is again something for the module
> > definition itself and not for this "module meta card".
> > 
> 
> > PS. The next part is the hard part - how do we make all this metainformation
> > available and up to date? I have some ideas and will post later. DS
> 
> Umm, you just put it in the module's .def file? It is then written whenever
> the module is written, and loaded along with it. This is probably the most
> straightforward solution.

Yes, that is where we should put it. I agree. That is where it belongs.
But the HARD part is to make ALL this metainformation available in an
up-to-date catalog.
I want to be able to do what I do in Debian - if I hear about a program
called "Frooble" then I type:

apt-get update; apt-cache search Frooble

The update part downloads any new indices from the Debian servers that I
have pointed out
and rebuilds the cache of all known packages. Then the search lists
packages named Frooble.

Then, I can of course write:
apt-get install Frooble

...which is equivalent to:
ModuleInstaller fullyInstallFromPath: #(Project Frooble)

But again - the first part is what I am talking about. How do we
maintain the catalog with the "meta cards"
collected from all modules in the whole Squak Universe so that I can
find Frooble?

regards, Göran



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