[Fedora-packaging] Long and "advertising" descriptions (was: Fedora 8 Update: enlightenment-0.16.999.043-3.fc8)

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On Mon, 2008-09-15 at 17:10 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-09-14 at 09:35 -0400, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> 
> > Wow. That is indeed too much information. :) I'm not sure how we should
> > "guideline" that, other than something like:
> > 
> > == Descriptions ==
> > Your package description should contain useful data about the package,
> > and answer the question "what is this and what does it do?". In general,
> > the description should not exceed 10 lines or so. Try not to put too
> > much here, this isn't an epic novel, it's just a package description.
> > Also, there is no real need to "advertise" the package here, so
> > statements like "this is the best perl module that has ever been created
> > by humans", while possibly accurate, are not terribly useful in
> > answering the question "what is this and what does it do?".
> 
> I think first and foremost, what is needed is to figure out what
> audience the description is targeted for. Everything else will fall in
> place once that is clear...

I can think of a few off the top of my head:

* Someone who is looking for a package that does $FOO
* Someone who is trying to figure out what this package that yum just
installed is for

~spot