[RFC][WIP][PATCH 0/5] adding extended package data

[Allan McRae]

On 7/3/22 13:44, Andrew Gregory wrote:
> On 03/06/22 at 05:17pm, Allan McRae wrote:
>> On 7/2/22 04:30, Andrew Gregory wrote:
>>> ALPM is currently parsing several fields that are not particularly relevant to
>>> managing package installation (e.g. pkgbase, pkgtype, makedepends,
>>> checkdepends).  pkgtype in particular is not even exposed in any way through
>>> the API, it has to be included in the parser with a "not actually used"
>>> comment.  This patchset adds an extended data field to packages that can be
>>> used by packagers or package-building infrastructure to store arbitrary package
>>> data in a way that doesn't require altering alpm for every field and allows the
>>> data to actually be retrieved via alpm (though not as easily as first-class
>>> fields).
>>>
>>> Andrew Gregory (5):
>>>     query: only strip leading local/ for db packages
>>>     query: allow querying extra info for package files
>>>     add data field for arbitrary package data
>>>     query: print extended data when extra info is requested
>>>     makepkg: store package type in extended data
>>
>> This looks a good idea to me.  Nothing stood out on a quick skim of the
>> patches.
> 
> One bikeshed question: I used what I felt was the most obvious storage for each
> of our formats, should they be unified?  I.e. should .PKGINFO use something
> like "data = name value" instead of "data-name = value" to more closely match
> desc files?
> 
I'd prefer .PKGINFO as "data = name value".  And we can put a 
restriction that data field names have no whitespace.


>> I assume patches 1 and 2 could be committed now?
> 
> Yes.
> .