Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2000 08:26:52 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender: eliz AT is
To: Laurynas Biveinis <lauras AT softhome DOT net>
cc: DJGPP Workers <djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: DJGPP library DSMs
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On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Laurynas Biveinis wrote:

> Eli, could
> you look through DSMs which I've sent for you? If particular package
> is the prime victim, could you add 'depends-on: djtzn' at the end of binary
> DSM?

I looked through the DSMs, made a DSM file for Make 3.79, and I have
several comments about the DSM spec as a side-effect.

1) It is not clear how to put more than a single value into a
   directive.  For example, there might be more than one author of a
   given package for the `author', `author-email' and other related
   directives.  Similarly, `depends-on' and `requires' might need more
   than a single value.  How should one go about doing this?

2) The fine difference between `depends-on' and `requires' is not
   clear, because ``functions properly'' and ``functionality may be
   impaired'' are ambiguous.  If the intent is that `requires' is any
   requirements without which the package will not work at all, then
   the spec should say so.

   Example DSM files that Laurynas sent me don't help here, because
   they fail to mention any non-trivial dependencies.  For example,
   diff's -l switch needs pr.exe, several of Emacs commands won't work
   without ispell, man, Grep, diff, and other programs, etc.  All
   these aren't mentioned, so it is hard to understand the intent of
   `depends-on'.

3) It seems like the spec is heavily slated towards installing a
   package, because some of the directives required for uninstalling
   are missing.  For example, a script and/or command to run when
   uninstalling would be a good idea (e.g., to run install-info to
   remove the entry from info/DIR).

4) I think we need a `current-maintainer' directive and the associated
   `current-maintainer-email', because the current maintainer might be
   someone different from the original author.  This is the case with
   many GNU packages.

5) To have a useful partition using the `group' directive, we need a
   list of standard groups.  We also need to address the possibility
   that some packages would want to belong to more than a single
   group.

6) It is not clear what do we ned to put under `mailing-list',
   `newsgroup', and related directives.  Are these for reporting
   problems in DJGPP ports, general discussions about the package, or
   something else, like discussing the package internals?

   In general, any given package will typically have several relevant
   mailing lists and/or news groups, in addition to
   comp.os.msdos.djgpp where they all can be discussed.  So we need
   clear guidelines about what to put there.  Or perhaps we need to
   have several different directives for the different types of
   forums.

7) Perhaps the installer and uninstaller should automatically run
   install-info with the appropriate arguments (these arguments are
   pretty standard).  This way, people won't need to put these
   commands into the DSM files, which is error-prone.