debtags (was: [devel] Another idea)

Peter Rockai writes:

> Section: office/openoffice GenericName: The OpenOffice.org Office
> Suite Name: OpenOffice.org Required-Tags:
> Desktop::Office::OpenOffice.org ...  The packages not satisfying
> criteria for any section get discarded, ie hidden. Voila, easy and
> nice *and* distribution friendly (they only override one file). And
> uses mostly in-place technology, no wheel-reinventing.  

Hi,

In the meantime, I have found out that debtags is implemented using
the tagcoll library, and I should be looking at that.  However, I
still have the following problems with it:

1. We can't add "our" packages for which no corresponding debian
   package is available.  This could be solved by adding corresponding
   packages to debian when this is necessary, but I'm not sure whether
   this is a good idea.

2. This doesn't solve the problem that Debian packages have no good
   user-oriented descriptions.  The Description field is aimed towards
   sysadmins, as policy requires, and a lot of packages contain
   information that would be confusing for a less-experienced user.

cheers
domi