Task:Packaging policy proposed changes

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Contents

Maemo packaging policy proposals

Current policy: Version 0.23

Package sections (Policy section 2.2)

Current section list seems to be confusing to both community developers and Nokia teams. All sections that were added by developers have been reviewed and this proposal is based on that result.

Current situation

Section 2.2 currently reads:

Packages are grouped into sections as in Debian, but SHOULD NOT specify a category in the segment part. (However it is not a bug if a package taken from Debian and made available in maemo retains its “contrib” or “non-free” segment.)

Instead maemo defines a user segment for controlling visibility in the Application Manager. Packages that are intended to be visible in the Application Manager MUST belong to the user segment, and packages that are not intended to be visible (such as libraries and other dependencies) MUST NOT belong to that segment.2

The section of packages in the user segment SHOULD be one of the following: ac- cessories, communication, games, multimedia, office, other, programming, support, themes, tools.3 The sections in this list will appear correctly localized in the Applica- tion Manager.

As an example, to put a package into the Office section and make it visible to the user, the value of the Section field in the debian/control file should be user/office. Packages not in the user segment SHOULD use the sections listed in the Debian Policy (http://www.debian.org/doc/debian- policy/ch- archive.html#s- subsections).

Proposed sections

Key Example English i18n Example apps
user/desktop Desktop Home, statusbar and taskbar applets
user/development Programming py2deb
user/education Educational Flashcard apps
user/games Games Doom, Duke Nukem 3D
user/graphics Graphics Photo apps, GIMP, Inkscape, fonts
user/multimedia Multimedia or Sound & Video Canola, mplayer, Kagu, UKMP, MediaBox
user/navigation (Location &) Navigation maemo-mapper, Navit
user/network Internet & Networking Web browsers, Samba clients, OpenAFS, Transmission
user/office Office GPE, Claws, AbiWord
user/science Science gnuplot, Octave
user/system System rotation-support, enhanced kernels, themes
user/utilities Utilities or Accessories Calculators, terminals, text editors

Proposed text in policy document:

The section of packages in the user segment SHOULD be one of the following: desktop, development, education, games, graphics, multimedia, navigation, network, office, science, system, utilities. The sections in this list will appear correctly localized in the Application Manager. If the package's section starts "user/", but is not any of the above, the Application Manager will force them into an "Other" section.

Discussion

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