On Tue, 25 Mar 2014 08:03:08 +0100 Jan Matejka <[email protected]> wrote:
> > No, categories are essentially directories. > > fixed: categories are essentially also directories. Also? No, categories are *essentially* directories: they keep files apart that should not go together. In precisely that way, their names happen to aid in building unique atoms, which you need to be able to tell a package manager (or development tool) which precise bunch of files you want to read/address/target/modify/etc. They are *also* other things, like identifiers for actual categories of packages (hence the name), which may or may not suit someone's needs in finding packages based on keywords. Stating in a GLEP that they're a "giant mistake" means you'll have to polish the document till you have rephrased that into something true and acceptable, or until you have purged every mention and reference of the "giant mistake" because it does not serve the purpose of the GLEP at all. Categories are *essential* to the way the repositories now work, and they're not going away, especially not by way of this GLEP. See below. > > I was asking about tags, not about categories. > > The original mails are: > > > On Sun, 23 Mar 2014 15:46:09 +0100 > > Jeroen Roovers <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > On Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:33:27 -0700 > > > Alec Warner <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Package_Tags > > > > > > "This GLEP author would love to blight categories out of gentoo > > > history as a giant mistake." > > > > > > Why? > > Categories are essentially tags, only less powerful as they can > > express relationship of 1:N while tags are can express M:N > > How is this a question about tags and not categories? The GLEP's statements about categories appear to be a straw man. It basically states that: * we introduced categories to aid in finding packages * but it turned out that categories suck at helping us find packages * so now we need to add "tags" * but we can keep categories because they have proven useful for other stuff You seem to be repeating the same illogical argument here. Now don't fix it here: go fix the GLEP. jer
