[Slackbuilds-users] OPTIONAL field [was: qemu/spice-gtk and usbredir]

[Andreas Guldstrand]

Another thread proposed allowing markdown-like sections in the READMEs
and standardising on how to format the README for each slackbuild
according to that, which would be fine IMO as it's still very readable
in a text editor; the markdown section tagging is very easy to read.

But adding semantics for individual env options and optional
dependencies in the README strikes me as a horrible idea. Not only
would it be absolute hell for any machine to parse and be extremely
prone to syntax errors from the author (it's a README! SYNTAX
ERRORS????), but it would also look like utter s**te in a text editor.

On 7 November 2016 at 12:14, Andrzej Telszewski <atelszewski at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I haven't slept too long and came up with the following idea
> (this assumes that we do *somehow* agree on some tags in README):
>
>
> The following optional, not auto-detected packages enable additional
> features (you need to install the package and set environment variable):
>
> [opt] libass, [env] ASS=yes|no [/opt], for ASS support,
> [opt] libbluray, [env] BLURAY=yes|no [/opt], for BLURAY support,
> [opt] libiec61883, libavc1394, [env] IEC61883=yes|no [/opt], for IEC61883
> support,
>
>
> The magic behind:
> we do not modify .info in any way, we just allow willing maintainers (you
> can choose if you want or not to support the idea) to structure the README
> in particular way, enclosing optional packages and environment variables in
> tags.
>
> We do it only for simple cases, i.e. if there is dependency that requires
> choosing between two exclusive ones, of which one depends on another
> optional package, then we leave it to human for parsing (although it still
> would be very helpful to be able to click on the optional package to see
> what is it about).
>
> SBo would parse the README to create clickable optional packages.
> Build tools would do what they have to do to do what they want to do.
>
> SBo would allow for README preview, so the maintainer could ensure it's the
> way he thinks it is.
> SBo would immediately reject the submission if there was syntax error (yuk,
> syntax error in README :-^).
>
> Subject for improvements :-)
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Andrzej Telszewski
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