Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
On Wednesday, 27 February 2008 at 03:55, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
[...]
> So the questions I'd see us needing to address are:
>
> 1) What are the criteria to split a package into multiple subpackages as
> opposed to keeping modules in a single/few subpackage.
Plugins implementing the same functionality using different external libraries
(database engine support plugins are a typical example) must be packaged
separately. A developer testing if the software works equally well with all
supported DBEs will just have to install all of them by hand. We'll assume
he's competent enough to do it.
+1
If the plugins do different things, it should be left for the
packager to
decide. Meta-packages come handy here (and are my preferred solution).
Not sure here. When coupled with the answer to #2 I think we should
have some guidance (packager gets final say but still some guidance)
We want the packager to know that leaving multiple disparate plugins in
a single package should have benefit to the end-user. If it doesn't
help the end user to have a single package then they need to break it
up. It can be a lot of work to package correctly but that is what the
packager is agreeing to when they submit a package.
> 2) When a subpackage is not split, should Requires be used to
pull in all
> of the dependencies or should they be used to pull in none of the
> dependencies.
All, of course. Otherwise we end up with bugreports saying the plugins
don't work (because we intentionally crippled them).
+1
> 3) What is the default level of functionality that should work
out of the
> box?
That should be left for the packager to decide.
I think we need guidance here as well. For instance, if a web
application needs a database to work out of the box but that database
could be any of mysql, postgres, or sqlite, do we require that one of
those be installed?
So... I don't see anything here that needs to go into the Guidelines but
I do think there's some stuff that should be thought about and go on the
wiki as recommendations of how to tell whether a subpackage needs to be
made.
-Toshio