[pacman-dev] package PKGINFO format vs DB format

[Aaron Griffin]

On 6/26/07, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/17/07, Roman Kyrylych <roman.kyrylych at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2007/4/23, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>:
> > > I may be missing some history here, but I am wondering why the package
> > > metadata is in a different format than the DB metadata.
> > >
> > > As far as parsing goes, it would be ideal to unify the two formats.
> > >
> > > Does anyone (judd, you're CC'd on this) know any reason to keep two
> > > different formats, or any tools that would be negatively impacted by
> > > such a change? Please note, a "negative impact" is not that same as
> > > "we have to change it for the new format" - more along the lines of
> > > "we can no longer do XYZ".
> >
> > Status?
> > I don't know any reason to keep them different.
> >
> > --
> > Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)
> > _______________________________________________
> > pacman-dev mailing list
> > pacman-dev at archlinux.org
> > http://archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/pacman-dev
> >
>
> This died a LONG way back. But I have something relevant here,
> courtesy of Chantry:
> http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2006-March/005702.html
>
> I'm all in favor of doing this, although it is going to break some
> things. We will need to plan a transition roadmap, especially if we
> want to get the local DB in the same format.

And it died again it seems!

This is a lot of work, and I'm trying to keep on top of these things....

So here's the operative question to get the ball rolling.

Which format do we like more?

[
    foo = bar
    baz = blah
]
vs
[
    %FOO%
    bar

    %BAZ%
    blah
]

And try not to think about where/when bash and python and things like
that need this data - that's a non-issue as we can always write helper
utils using libalpm's parsing if it becomes really hard for things
like, say, namcap.