SoftwarePackaging

From W3C Wiki

In August 1997, as work on XML was finishing up, The Open Software Description Format (OSD) was submitted to W3C. It was one of the applications that motivated the development of RDF. Let's close the loop, shall we?

Let's give the idea a home among in the VocabularyMarket.

See also: W3C SWBP task force on software engineering

Some relevant work already in the Resource Description Framework:

Hmm... critical mass for a ScheduledTopicChat?

And some is yet to be webized... OS-related software packaging machinery such as Debian, Fink, Redhat etc. as well as to language-specific installation and packaging frameworks (Python, Ruby, Perl, Java...).

Languages

Perl

fodder...

See #foaf discussion.

Python

From #rdfig chat:

eikeon: Python has a distutil library from which setup.py scripts are usually built. http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-distutils.html http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/

reagle isn't sure if they are compatible really... but imgseek but be a good example (a nice pthon-qt package)

see also: use of setup.py in rdflib.

new in python2.3: Package index and metadata for distutils. This is support of the Python catalog, now open for business at python.org/pypi. (PEP 301)

LinkMe: timbl's talk on webizing python at pycon (2001? 2002?). 99% it was 2002

Ruby

install.rb, RAA, RAA-Succ etc. @@todo

The Ruby Application Archive (RAA) is a central database (how is it maintained? CGI/forms?) of Ruby software packages. There have been various discussions about successors to this.

Rdoc experiments

Rdoc is also part of the puzzle. DanBri and Dave Thomas spent some time chatting about the addition of RDF to Rdoc, the Ruby software documentation tool. The results of some experimentation are scattered in the Web. It introspects a Ruby package and generates RDF descriptions of classes, which can be loaded into an RDF triplestore for query and merging.

A possible use case: find me the email addresses and IRC nicks of the authors of software packages that subclass my Blah-Blah class (because I've jsut found a bug in it and plan to change the interface slightly).

Previous work:

Java

LinkMe: .jar documentation, manifests, WAR bundles for web apps in Tomcat.

Platforms

Debian

LinkMe: packaging guidelines, .deb format etc

...this page very unfinished placeholder!

RPM, Red Hat

PkgMaker is a utility that can read a Red'Hat RPM .spec file and produce a Solaris, HP-UX, or tarball package from the .spec (and, of course, one can create a Red'Hat package from it as well). An RDF representation of the .spec would be a natural. -- KenMacLeod

Historical Interest

Pre-RDF/XML, we had IAFA records (used on FTP sites, and in the (UK eLib) ROADS project), WHOIS++, SOIF etc. Some of these were customised for software description purposes. There was something called the Linux Software Map (?) that was IAFA based. Dave Beckett also did work in this area, including the UK Mirror Service using RDF as described in There From Here, Deploying RDF in a Large Scale Mirror Service

I started digging around for HistoricalMetadataFormats, straying offtopic, these could be moved, hmm maybe RdfHistory? --DanBri

The HTTP Distribution and Replication Protocol (submission to W3C).

Resource Description Messages (RDM), W3C NOTE 24-Jul-96, by Darren Hardy.

Neukalog: Fighting Debian... (via planet apache)

A-A-P features -- make/install/distribute software

The Zero Install system. DanConnolly tried it (notes); it works as documented.

Caching is Not Enough by Norm Walsh 26 Jun 2003

Caching in with Resolvers -- Norm Walsh at XML 2003 (wwwoffle)

XSA -- hmm... kinda like DOAP, but without RDF. used by RXP, among others.