[Slackbuilds-users] requirements in README files

[Pierre Cazenave]

On 10/07/2012 18:44, J wrote:
> 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:
>
> My request is related *strictly* to formatting, and goes absolutely
> no further. So that if someone submits a slackbuild with the
> requirement listed, for example, like this:
>
> Depends on: x, y, and z
>
> Then it gets corrected by the admin, who is already making
> corrections, and would only need to change that line to:
>
> This requires x, y, and z.
>
> since that is currently the most popular format and so it makes sense
> to adopt that as the format in question.
>
> And, as mentioned, I would be very happy to take up this part of the
> work.
>
> 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.
>
> Quoting Chess Griffin <chess at chessgriffin.com>:
>
>> On Tue, Jul 10, 2012, at 11:31 AM, J wrote:
>>
>>> where you're dead wrong is the stuff about testing. what in the
>>> world does all that have to do with anything? the testing process
>>> wouldn't change one iota from where it currently stands.
>>>
>>
>> Right now, it's up each maintainer to list the dependencies in the
>> README.  Yes, there is some vetting of this information by the
>> admins but essentially the burden remains with the maintainer.
>> However, if the admins were to adopt an official SBo policy on
>> dependency handling and naming convention in the README file, then
>> it seems to me each submission would therefore need to be checked
>> and tested against this policy, both for completeness and accuracy.
>> And that would fall on the admins.
>>
>> -- Chess Griffin _______________________________________________
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>
>
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I have no objection to being asked to list the dependencies in the 
READMEs in my packages with a specific format. Since I tend to write 
them on a single line at the end of the packages, it's not the end of 
the world if I always use the same style.

That being said, I've noticed that Eric Hameleers has a few 
slack-required files in his repository. I'm not sure if that's an 
indication that there's a move towards some automation there...

Besides altering the README, I'm inclined to think that a new field in 
the .info is the most programatically sensible. It's readily parseable, 
will cause almost zero false positives (a line of prose in a README 
might be slightly more difficult to parse), and is little extra work for 
the maintainer.

I suppose the difficulty is the retroactive application of these 
potential changes. There are currently 3296 build scripts in the 
repository. I'm not volunteering to go through all of those and manually 
update the format of the dependencies.

On the whole, however, I think this would be a positive for building 
Slackware packages. As has already been mentioned, it changes relatively 
little for those who wish to ignore this information whilst making 
building packages less tiresome for those who choose to use it.

Pierre