Hello there!
This may look like like a lot of text but it actually isn't. Please read on. Thanks. During the last few days rbu and I have been teaming up on a proposal implementation improving on some of the issues that persist around layman-global.txt. (previously summarized in [1]) Both layman and the feed aggregator (planet) behind overlays.gentoo.org work with a database of information on repositories. These databases are not shared so changes do not propagate. That's not cool. What we have done for now: - Extended layman-global.txt format to repositories.xml format adding - A list of feed URIs .. for the planet side - Several source URIs .. for mirroring and several protocols - Owner name i.e. the name of the person to contact - quality classification (core, stable, testing, experimental, graveyard) .. to better guide users - project/person distinction .. for the planet side mainly - Created DTDs and Relax NG schemas for both the old and new format - Wrote a converter script from layman-global.txt format to repositories.xml format and back. It also adds "generated file" style warnings. The scripts have no dependencies other than plain Python. - Prepared a patch against layman trunk at r38 that adds support for - repositories.xml format - display of owner names (in addition to e-mail addresses) We have more or less the following future process in mind: - Collect feedback from the list (right now) and adjust the format and process as needed - Give birth to repositories.xml online - Decide about the final web location of repositories.xml - Put an initial repositories.xml on gentoo infra - Set up the repositories.xml to layman-global.txt converter script on the same machine to propagate all changes over to layman-global.txt in an automated fashion so we can keep it alive and up-to-date while still only editing its replacement - Revise layman patch until wrobel wants it upstream and put our a new layman release after - Setup script to create planet config from repositories.xml (Script creation is in progress.) - Take layman-global.txt offline in a year or so Here is a sample entry for each XML formats: layman-global.txt ===================================================================== <overlay contact="sebast...@pipping.org" name="sping" src="git://git.goodpoint.de/overlay-sping.git" status="unofficial" type="git"> <link>http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=overlay-sping.git</link> <description>Gentoo overlay of Sebastian Pipping</description> </overlay> ===================================================================== repositories.xml ===================================================================== <repo name="sping" quality="experimental" status="unofficial"> <description>Gentoo overlay of Sebastian Pipping</description> <homepage>http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=overlay-sping.git</homepage> <owner type="person"> <email>sebast...@pipping.org</email> <name>Sebastian Pipping</name> </owner> <source type="git">git://git.goodpoint.de/overlay-sping.git</source> <feed>http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=overlay-sping.git.git;a=atom</feed> </repo> ===================================================================== The code and schemas can be found at [2]. Now please ask questions and let us know what you think. Sebastian [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org/msg35095.html [2] http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=overlays-xml-specification.git;a=summary