RFC: fix summary text for lots of packages

Michal Hlavinka mhlavink at redhat.com
Thu Nov 20 19:58:57 UTC 2008


> > Usually, if I need something, I use yum search keyword and choose what I 
> > will install thx summary, so I prefer useful and descriptive summary 
> > against a few words
>
> "yum search" also searches the package %description. And the description
> is the place where to be much more verbose than in the summary. The
> %summary is not made for searching, but for enabling the installer and
> packaging tools to to display a brief and concise package description or a
> list thereof. That means, put a few relevant keywords in the summary
> (newspaper headline-style at most), but avoid long/complete sentences as
> often as possible. That also makes it easier to fit into one line.

yes, but... example: you need some email client, so...
yum search mail
and you get:
evolution-email client
kmail-client for email
mutt-mail agent
squirrelmail-mail client

these summaries will be really short but really useless. You can't choose any package just from summary but you need to go one by one with yum info package. IMHO summary should be descriptive enough to tell you not only difference between mutt and nut.

Personally, I have no problem with "one sentence summary". If there is any packaging client (or anything else) who has problem, it's not package's fault, client is broken.

So again, if PackageKit is broken fix PackageKit, not everything else.

btw, yum search oggconvert gives me line with 75 characters
yum search 'a' gives me
2744 packages/lines with 75 or more characters (it's 16 %)
the longest line has 82 characters

Do you really want to fix all these because of... what exactly? because summary is "too" descriptive?




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list