[Slackbuilds-users] requirements in README files

[Jan Herrygers]

Op dinsdag 10 juli 2012 12:44:58 schreef J:
> Thanks for clearing that up, I now see where you're coming from. And I
> believe you're misunderstanding; please all me an attempt to clarify:

You want to build a tool that simplifies building a dependency graph. You 
already stated that this "simplificating tool" shouldn't be and won't be a 
replacement for reading the READme.

> My request is related *strictly* to formatting, and goes absolutely no
> further. So that if someone submits a slackbuild [...]
> it gets corrected by the admin, who is already making
> corrections, and would only need to change that line [...]

Let me quote Erik Hanson on this:
Op dinsdag 10 juli 2012 12:21:39 schreef Erik Hanson:
> This is not a fact. We may change them at our discretion if they are messy,
> confusing, or wrong. There is no policy in place, written or otherwise, to
> make them consistent.

So maintainers don't edit READMEs, unless it is needen really badly. That is 
my interpretatiion of Erik's words, anyway.

Let me think a little outside the box. Bear with me, or skip this section, 
whatever you like.

You want to read every README (I'm not going to emphasise the fact that both 
words contain "read" again,... oops seems like I did anyway). You also want a 
tool that frees you of the duty to open a new browser tab every time a 
dependency/requirement/neat-plugin-that-you-may-want is mentioned.

Perhaps a tool, some variation of less, more, vim, Emacs, cat,... , can be 
written in which you simply highlight the name of a dependency, and the text 
that you highlighted is added to a dependency list.
When you are finished reading a readme, you move on to the readme for the next 
package on the dependency list. And so on ad infinitum (or until you have 
finished your list).

That way you aren't dependent on any formatting being present, but you still 
get a nice dependency tree. (I have no idea how one would build such a 
program, but I'm optimistic about the feasability and feature set of the 
mythical deptree tool I described above.)

Op dinsdag 10 juli 2012 12:44:58 schreef J:
> So, again: my concern is strictly limited to formatting, and only for
> actual hard and fast requirements, not optionals. This represents a
> minor formatting change *at worst*. And that, I believe, requires no
> change to the testing currently done by admins.

Back in the box again.
A recommendation on how to list dependencies in a readme would be nice. But 
asking the admins to either edit the recommended format into every readme, or 
to give you write access to the repo, is a lot to ask. I wouldn't count on a 
standard that gets enforced to the point that it can be parsed with awk, 
regexes, or something like that.

But publishing a recommendation doesn't hurt, and it can be beneficial for the 
human reader too.
I woul like a list delimited by newlines and/or tabs (perhaps multiple 
spaces?) That would IMHO be much more readable than separated by "," or "and" 
delimiters.
Those who want to follow the recommendation, can do so, and those who don't 
want to, can keep doing what it is that they do want to do.