[Nix-dev] Re: Reorganization of the nixpkg file hierarchy

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Marc Weber <marco-oweber at gmx.de> writes:

> Maybe we could just use
>
> meta = {
>   gentoo_location = " app-admin/http";
>   tags = [ "http" "daemons" ];
>   [..]
> }

Regarding tags, maybe we could get inspiration from other distros, e.g.,
http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/cloud/ .  Also, we could make them
first-class objects instead of just raw strings, as in:

  tags = [ tags.network.server tags.protocol.http tags.implementedIn.c ]

This would help avoid the introduction of redundant tags (since the
definition of `tags' would need to be centralized), would allow for tag
documentation (as with `mkOption' in NixOS), and might make it possible
to directly re-use tags from other distros.

Nevertheless, for tag-based search to be efficient, it would be best to
avoid traversing the whole Nixpkgs hierarchy, which would require some
form of compilation of `meta' attributes in a compact form.

Thanks,
Ludo'.