http://fedoraproject.org/extras/4/i386/repodata/

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 12:59:46PM -0400, Chris Ricker wrote:
> Two big reasons for doing it external:
> 1. it's not Yet More Crap in the spec file that will rot over time, but 
> forever more be needed (like the current spec Group)

Well, since the current group tag is already Forever More Needed, we might
as well reuse it for this.

> 2. it can be revised as needed, and retrofitted to existing packages, 
> without rebuilding the world

An advantage over the tag/trove approach over the old groups scheme is that
the hierarchy and display would be kept as external, so most sorts of
retrofitting wouldn't require rebuild.

Keeping the tag information in an external file has the converse problem:
every time you want to change (or worse, add) a package, someone has got to
edit the file. And I don't think we want to have a .metadata file for every
package, so it's likely to be Some Central File.

> About the only reason I can think of for doing it in the spec is 
> simplicity

Exactly. And don't underestimate simplicity. :)

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>
Current office temperature: 78 degrees Fahrenheit.