On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 01:52:11PM -0500, Paul Kasper wrote: >> Now, with that in mind, you have two options. One is for each package >> that wants to participate in this index to deliver one or more files in >> a special directory that your service will read and use to build the >> index. >> >> The second possibility is that you'll deliver your information as package >> attributes (pointing to URIs), and your service will simply gather all >> those attributes and rebuild the index as necessary. > > Well, we would most likely want to provide short descriptions for each > entry and associated metadata to help organize the index. So, I think the > first option would be better.
We can attach arbitrary metadata to a package. Within reason, you can pack a fair amount of information in there, rather than having to deliver files. I'd say that descriptions, URIs, and other metadata-like things needn't require any files to be delivered. Of course, you might choose to do so, regardless. Your service can always support both methods, if there are some packages which actually want real files delivered. >> I'll also note that we intend to deliver documentation in the same package >> that delivers the functionality. This will likely mostly be man pages for >> the core Solaris bits, but also whatever text and html documentation might >> come along with the various bits of opensource we ship. > > So, for man pages, this integration is already established. But, how do > you plan to install the text and html documentation... I'm simply talking about the clutter of stuff that's already being delivered in /usr/share/doc (and possibly other places). I don't know that I'd consider that "easy to find", and it certainly doesn't quickly lead you to external resources. See the "tags and attributes" document Stephen Hahn circulated on pkg-discuss a month or so ago for some proposals for standard tags for things like a project's website, and feel free to make additional comments. >> One thing you don't mention is exactly what this index is. Is it an >> html page sitting on the system? How do you expect that people will >> access this index? How do you expect they'll discover it? > > My assumption is that it would be an XML file that could be used to > deliver the information in whatever format we choose. It could be > available as a link on the desktop or main link as part of the package > install output. There are a number of ways to get the word out...that > will be the easy part. ;) So you'd want to write a specialized app to read that file, rather than pointing a browser at it? > Thanks for all your feedback. Beyond your feedback, what do you think of > the overall need of my proposal? Given the number of times I've gone trawling through docs.sun.com looking for various bits of documentation, I think it could be very convenient if it were all indexed (and maybe even cached) locally. I'd be a bit concerned about the docs being available even for pre-release versions of the OS (like Nevada and OpenSolaris), since developers tend to be on the bleeding edge, and often the official documentation isn't available until close to the end of the release. Danek _______________________________________________ pkg-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-discuss
