[Rpm-metadata] xml update

[Jeff Licquia]

On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 12:15, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 19:47, seth vidal wrote:
> > anything that is specific to a particular packaging tool will need to be
> > prefaced by a namespace for that tool and should not affect other tools
> > 
> > so
> > <apt-rpm:priority>1</apt-rpm:priority>  seems reasonable  for
> > repositories generated by apt-rpm's mechanism
> 
> I agree on "what is specific to particular packaging tool" part BUT
> things like priority and Enhances are general concepts which *could* be
> used by other tools as well. Lets say redcarpet adds support for
> priority.. and then we have two different entries for the thing, one for
> apt-rpm and one for redcarpet, both having the same data. Oh and one
> more place to present that in Debian world...

I don't have a problem either way, but I will point out that there's no
reason why, say, Red Carpet couldn't make use of the "deb" namespace
when adding support for priority:

I'm also all in favor of finding generally useful metadata in practice,
rather than guessing at it now.  If <deb:priority> turns out to be
wildly popular in the RPM world, it can be promoted in a v2 of the
metadata spec.

> Tool-specific hacks to tool specific namespaces but useful data should
> be generally available, I'd feel quite silly adding code to apt-rpm to
> poke through say, redcarpet namespace for some bit of information. If
> the packaging tool doesn't understand / support some general tag then
> simply ignore it...

I don't see any reason why it should be silly for apt to make use of Red
Carpet metadata, or yum to use apt metadata, or up2date to use urpmi
metadata, or anything else.

The only thing I would say is that package-tool-specific metadata should
be optional; if the tool absolutely requires it, then it should be in
the package-specific or general metadata.