Re: Requiring DOAP instead of MAINTAINERS file

[Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org>]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 07:40:00PM +0100, Mathias Hasselmann wrote:
> 
> Am Freitag, den 18.01.2008, 15:57 -0200 schrieb Tristan Van Berkom:
> > I can see that xml might be a little less beautiful to the eye, and
> > also
> > that text files might be a little less beautiful to a machine who has
> > to parse some custom format that might be subject to change, the
> > great 
> > thing about xml is that is very easy to read for a computer and
> > for a human. 
> 
> Yes, that's how XML was designed, and this promise works pretty well for
> XHTML and many other XML based language - but producing a XML based
> language thats human and machine friendly needs some attention. The DOAP
> examples I've seen so far do not show the slightest evidence, that DOAP
> was designed for humans. Most parts of a DOAP file just is RDF and
> namespace boilerplate. Who should remember all that crap? Well, of
> course a template file could be used for all that boilerplate stuff.
> Well, unfortunately the need for using template files, is a very good
> sign for poor language design - IMHO.

You plan on changing that stuff every second or so?!? IMO after the
standard DOAP files have been generated, it should be ok to be edited.
I'll probably ask e.g. GHOP to fill in any missing detail anyway.

You say that e.g. MAINTAINERS is easy. Well, my parser script doesn't
agree.

I don't see what is hard about:
shortdesc>Java-based build tool</shortdesc>

vs:
shortdesc: Java-based build tool


Both have to be thoroughly checked for syntax, as maintainers will get
them wrong, often. Yes, XML is harder, that is why there should be
examples. It isn't that hard. Further, usually it is only a one-time
exercise.

> > Also agree with Murray that having a sophisticated centralized
> > database would confuse and complicate things in gnome, it's somehow
> > reassuring to me that every project has all of its important
> > information in its separate tarballs and revision history.
> 
> Yes, that central database part of Olav's proposal is a part I failed to
> understand. Motivation seems less annoyance due commit hooks. Just
> another reason to use some easy to understand text format, instead of
> DOAP which seems error prone with all that long namespaces and long
> attribute names.

Lots of people don't even get the MAINTAINERS syntax right. I don't
believe anything will work without strict enforcement (the MAINTAINERS
syntax check is *really* simple). IMO it is like autotools. Almost
nobody understands it and just copies some existing file. Which works
just fine.

-- 
Regards,
Olav