Request for comments: port-tags

[Wesley Shields]

On Wed, Nov 09, 2005 at 03:28:17PM +0100, Anton Berezin wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 11:54:13PM -0500, Parv wrote:
> > in message <437062D6.6050001 at FreeBSD.org>,
> > wrote Lars Thegler thusly...
> > >
> > > Alex Dupre wrote:
> > > >like it very much. One thing we can add to enhance the tag 
> > > >classification is to add an optional PORTTAGS variable where we can 
> > > >define additional tags (not present in CATEGORY and COMMENT) for the 
> > > >port, so that "Maildir" could be for example associated with 
> > > >mail/dovecot. This will require additional work for maintainers, but I 
> > > >think it'll highly improve the searches.
> > > 
> > > I suspect most (if not all) tag addition could be done within COMMENT 
> > > itself. For people browsing the portstree through other means, say, 
> > > FreshPorts, improving COMMENT makes very good sense, IMHO.
> > 
> > When i read COMMENT, i want to know the purpose of the port.
> > Currently, in most cases i have to read pkg-descr to get a better
> > understanding (as COMMENT is just filler).  (Yes, i know that only
> > thing that can improve the current situation would be to file PRs to
> > better define COMMENT.)
> > 
> > If keywords start filling COMMENT,  i think purpose of COMMENT will
> > fail.  Then again, rereading what i wrote in the above paragraph,
> > COMMENT will server a fruitful purpose finally by containing
> > keywords (albeit under a indirectly related variable name).
> 
> I will support a TAGS field;  what I cannot decide at this moment, is
> whether to ignore COMMENT and pkg-descr (support for which I will add
> shortly) when TAGS is present, or use TAGS as an additional tag source
> only.

I would think that if someone goes through the work to define a TAGS
field that it would be more accurate than what your getting from COMMENT
and will be getting from pkg-descr.  In order to weed out any
less-than-descriptive tags I would use only the TAGS field if it exists
in the makefile and if it does not then use the combination of keywords
from COMMENT and pkg-descr.

BTW, I really like this idea - it makes searching for ports much easier.

-- WXS