Task:Package categories

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This wiki page serves as a discussion page for improving the categorization system used for Maemo packages. Improvements here will be pushed to the Maemo Packaging Policy through Task:Packaging policy proposed changes.

This proposal is coordinated by Niels Breet and is part of the Extras repository process definition.

Contents

Problem

People feel the need to create new categories, because the current list is too limited.

Another problem is that some categories aren't very descriptive. What applications go in to tools, support or accessories?

Maemo Packaging Policy

The current Maemo Packaging Policy lists the following sections:

  • accessories
  • communication
  • games
  • multimedia
  • office
  • other
  • programming
  • support
  • themes
  • tools

New list for Diablo

This is the final list for Diablo:

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

If the package's section starts "user/", but is not any of the above, the Application Manager forces them into an "Other" section.

Future additions

The current proposed list is only for Diablo, future additions and changes will be considered for Fremantle.

Debtags

Debian Package Tags: Faceted Classification

As stated on the debtags website:

Drawing a bit freely from the literature of Faceted Classification, a facet is a group of tags which describe the same quality of a package. Package Tags are organized in Facets, that represent different points of view from which to look at the package archive. For example, you could have a "Usage" facet with tags about what a program is intended to be used for, or you could have a "Media" facet with tags about what kind of information a program is able to process, a "Technology" facet about the technology a package uses, and so on. With this approach, every tag is situated in a specific context, and has a clear meaning. Also, tags from different facets shed light on packages from different points of view, giving "depth" to its categorization. Take something tagged with "Use::Chatting", "Technology::IRC", "Role::Server": it has a remarkable level of detail, and tells almost everything we need to know about what the package does.

Application-specific subcategories

Within each of the top-level categories, projects may want to group a number of packages together. For this, sub-sections can be used. For example, Canola may have:

Package Section
canola2 user/multimedia/Canola
canola2-theme-flatblack user/multimedia/Canola/themes
canola2-youtube-plugin user/multimedia/Canola/plugins
canola-tuning user/multimedia/Canola/settings

The rule is simple:

  1. If the portion of the section path starts with a capital letter, it is shown as-is
  2. Otherwise the portion of the section path must be one of the above sections or, additionally:
    • themes
    • plugins
    • translations

Translations

Key en_GB en_US es_MX nl_NL pt_BR no_NO fi_FI it_IT fr_CA da_DK pt_PT sv_SE fr_FR es_ES ru_RU de_DE
user/desktop Desktop Desktop Bureaublad Área de Trabalho Työpöytä Desktop Bureau Skrivebord Bureau Escritorio Десктоп Desktop
user/development Programming Programming Ontwikkeling Desenvolvimento Ohjelmointi Programmazione Programmation Programmering Programmation Programación Программирование Entwicklung
user/education Educational Educational Educatief Educacional Opiskelu Educazione Éducation Undervisning Éducation Educación Образование Bildung
user/games Games Games Spelletjes Jogos Pelit Giochi Jeux Spil Jeux Juegos Игры Spiele
user/graphics Graphics Graphics Grafisch Gráficos Grafiikka Grafica Graphismes Grafik Graphismes Gráficos Графика Grafik
user/multimedia Multimedia Multimedia Multimedia Multimídia Multimedia Multimedia Multimédia Multimedier Multimédia Multimedia Мультимедия Multimedia
user/navigation Location & Navigation Location & Navigation Locatie en Navigatie Posicionamento e Navegação Paikannus ja navigointi Posizione e Navigazione Localisation et Navigation Position og Navigation Localisation et Navigation Localización y Navegación Позиционирование и Навигация Position & Navigation
user/network Internet & Networking Internet & Networking Internet en Netwerk Internet e Redes Internet ja viestintä Internet e reti Internet et Réseaux Internet og netværk Internet et Réseaux Internet y Redes Интернет и Сети Internet & Netzwerk
user/office Office Office Kantoor Escritório Toimisto Ufficio Bureautique Kontor Bureautique Oficina Оффис Büro
user/science Science Science Wetenschap Ciência Tiede Scienza Science Videnskab Science Ciencia Наука Wissenschaft
user/system System System Systeem Sistema Järjestelmä Sistema Système System Système Sistema Система System
user/utilities Utilities Utilities Gereedschappen Utilitários Apuohjelmat Utilita` Utilitaires Værktøjer Utilitaires Utilidades Утилиты Werkzeuge

Link title

Reference

freedesktop.org

The basic, rationalised, set of high-level sections according to the freedesktop.org menu specification are: Accessories, Development, Education, Game, Graphics, Multimedia, Network, Office, Settings, System.

Debian

The Debian archive maintainers provide the authoritative list of sections. At present, they are: admin, comm, devel, doc, editors, electronics, embedded, games, gnome, graphics, hamradio, interpreters, kde, libs, libdevel, mail, math, misc, net, news, oldlibs, otherosfs, perl, python, science, shells, sound, tex, text, utils, web, x11.

Previous discussions

Bugs

1805MediumRESOLVEDnormal4.1.xDeveloper GuideMaking a package for the Application Manager in maemo 3.x does not list what apps should go to what section[1]
Warnings were generated during the execution of function
  1. Parameter columns=id, priority, severity, modified, product, status, summary, to is invalid using regex /^[\w,_+-~]*$/