Hi, On Thu, 2016-04-14 at 18:35 +0200, Petr Šabata wrote: > the first draft of the module metadata format is now available > for you to comment on. We've decided to go with YAML so it > should be fairly readable. You can view the latest version here: > > https://pagure.io/fm-metadata/blob/master/f/metadata.yaml > > What is is: > The file defines basic properties of the module such as its > name, version, description, licenses, references to upstream > documentation or its content. Currently only RPM content > is supported but this can be easily extended in the future. > The metadata file is meant as both input and output of the > module build process (don't confuse it with package build > process), with various tools adding various new data to it, > such as vendor and buildsystem identifiers, timestamp of the > build, autogenerated lists of licenses or whatever you can > think of (well, maybe not whatever but close). The output is > then placed in the generated repository, container image or > any other module deliverable and can be processed by tools and > services consuming and delivering modules. > > What is isn't: > It's not a SPEC file. It doesn't say how to build individual > packages. And it's not a simple comps group either. It can > and does provide lots more additional data. > > It's not perfect and it's constantly evolving. Please, do > comment, ask questions and suggest improvements. How easy is it to modify and change field definitions around? I see you've got a version identified for the format already --- good, that's definitely something we want here. One thing I think we need is a bit more detail in the module dependencies. We don't need them all for the initial task of building a module and testing its repoclosure; but I think we may well have a need for (for example) * Package build deps: what other modules you need to compile packages in this module. (This basically defines the build root for the module, and we want to be able to make sure we're using a consistent build root with consistent compiler versions etc. for all the packages in a module.) * Runtime deps: what other modules need to be enabled by the user at runtime to use this module. Eg. library dependencies, CLI tool requirements. * -Devel deps: what other modules need to be enabled by the user to build applications against this module. We could also expand on the module ID a bit. Many packaging systems use a hierarchical naming scheme --- eg. instead of name: foo, name might be "foo.fedora.org". A maintainer name and reference download URL/homepage could also be useful here. But the main place I'd like to see expanded is the package list itself. In addition to the list of packages included, I think we need: What is the function of the package? It may be: * A runtime component which is part of the official API of the module. We can do things like verify ABI compatibility on these components on updates if we want. * A runtime component which is an internal implementation-detail only (similar to the distinction between unstable, internal and stable, external symbols in a library.) A user should know not to rely on these components remaining the same on module updates. We should also record which externally-usable package needs this internal dependency in this case. * A -devel package: never needed at runtime; only used if a developer is building an application against the module. * Debuginfo. We could choose to keep debuginfo in the module itself, marked this way; or we could keep separate debuginfo lookasides or separate debuginfo modules. Not sure which way we'll eventually go, but it would be useful to at least be able to mark packages which are included only for runtime debugging. For long-term distro maintenance, it will be *hugely* helpful to be able to look at content and say "why do we have this package? Does anyone actually need it, or is it only there to satisfy some dependency for an application that was added years ago and might not even need it any longer?" Making the distinction between external and internal functionality, and recording explicitly what needs the internal pieces, will really help that sort of long-term maintenance, making it much easier to see when dependencies are no longer needed. > Thanks, > P > -- > devel mailing list > devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/devel@lists.fedoraproject. > org -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
