[pacman-dev] pacman tag support

[Nagy Gabor]

> In answer to
> http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2008-August/007644.html
> 
> To Ronald :
> 
> It is nice you worked on this, especially considering it was a feature
> request posted by Aaron himself :
> http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7132
> 
> However, I warmly recommend you to have a look at this :
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Development
> 
> Especially the submitting patches page. And all the git guides.
> 
> 1) you should really use git for doing pacman development
> 2) it it is a good idea to split patches, especially huge ones like
> this 3) all pacman development happens on pacman-dev, not
> arch-dev-public 4) all big patches go through the ML for review and
> discussion. Even Dan sometimes sends his own patches (the less
> trivial ones) there
> 
> 
> To everyone :
> 
> About the feature itself, here is the last thread where it was
> discussed :
> http://archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2007-June/008555.html I was
> always divided about it. I understand the point of view "groups are
> installable, categories are not" However, after having a look at this
> patch, it seems like it justifies Nagy's opinion even more :
> http://archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2007-June/008565.html
> This category implementation basically looks like a duplication of the
> whole group implementation.

In alpm a group is simply a set of packages (with a given "set name",
like xorg). Nothing more. (The front-end does the group specific
operations, the back-end just stores our "sets".) Tag or category
is just an other _type_ of sets (type A: group, type B: category...).
The question is, whether we need this? Imho not. (If someone wants to
implement categories, he can use "category:multimedia" group (== set)
names and hack some "interpreter" to front-end. But I think we don't
need this distinction at all, see my linked opinion: IMHO the meaning
of "group" and "category" are similar).

Bye