On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Stefan Husmann <stefan-husmann@t-online.de>wrote:

Am 01.09.2010 20:08, schrieb PyroPeter:

...

Hello subscribers,

imo its hard to decide which category to use for some packages.

E.g. a browser: Should it be categorized as "network" or "x11"?

Is there a exact definition of these categorys somewhere? If not, one should be written.

Regards, PyroPeter

AFAIK not. The categories aare for better searching in AUR only, they have no technical reason in pacman. therefore the issue seems not important enough for someone writing an exact definitions document.

Regards Stefan

Even if it isn't important, I tend to put my packages under a category that is closest to the categories available. If an application is used for the internet, I put it under Network.

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 9:59 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu 02 Sep 2010 03:48 +0200, Stefan Husmann wrote:

...

Am 01.09.2010 20:08, schrieb PyroPeter:

...

Hello subscribers,

imo its hard to decide which category to use for some packages.

E.g. a browser: Should it be categorized as "network" or "x11"?

Is there a exact definition of these categorys somewhere? If not, one should be written.

AFAIK not. The categories aare for better searching in AUR only, they have no technical reason in pacman. therefore the issue seems not important enough for someone writing an exact definitions document.

Well, categories are a legacy structure from the old ABS system. They were removed and the idea of a better categorisation system has been flirted with.

Here's a relevant feature request. http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7132

I took a look at the feature request, and I have to say that I kinda like the idea that it presents.

On 09/02/2010 03:48 AM, Stefan Husmann wrote:

Am 01.09.2010 20:08, schrieb PyroPeter:

...

Hello subscribers,

imo its hard to decide which category to use for some packages.

E.g. a browser: Should it be categorized as "network" or "x11"?

Is there a exact definition of these categorys somewhere? If not, one should be written.

Regards, PyroPeter

AFAIK not. The categories aare for better searching in AUR only, they have no technical reason in pacman. therefore the issue seems not important enough for someone writing an exact definitions document.

Regards Stefan

That is self-contradictory: If categorys are not well defined, it would be useless to use them for searching. The only area where they would be of limited use would be for blacklisting: E.g. If I would be running a system without X, I could hide packages that are in the x11-category. The question is: If that feature mostly useless, does it make sense to implement it? Does the little use in blacklisting outweight the added complexity? Imo this feature should be removed. ### On bug #7132: I did not read all of the comments, as they tended to digress. I differentiate between 'categorys' (a pkg can only be in _one_ category at a time) and 'tags' (multiple tags allowed per pkg). I think of categorys as very inflexible, because the reality just does not provide things fitting exactly into only one category. Tags, on the other hand, would be a solution to the problem of packages fitting into multiple categorys. But they have a big disadvantage: All packages _must_ be tagged with all matching tags, or the whole thing gets useless in some use-cases. This limits the number of tags that can be defined, as one needs knowledge of all definitions to be able to properly tag a package. Checking a package for correct tagging also is very hard, and gets harder with every additional tag defined. This all leads me to the conclusion that categorys or tags produce more work then they save. Regards, PyroPeter -- freenode/pyropeter "12:50 - Ich drücke Return."