Re: Re-approaching package tagging

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hello,

Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:

> In the past when we've discussed package tagging, I think Ludo' has been
> against it, primarily because it's a giant source of bikeshedding.  I
> agree that it's a huge space for bikeshedding... no space provides more
> bikeshedding than naming things, and tagging things is a many to many
> naming system.

The reason I’m unconvinced about tags is that I used to be a big fan of
them, back when debtags was introduced (long ago!), but then I had to
face reality: people (me included) would just do plain text searches,
not sophisticated tag queries.

> However, I will say that finding packages based on topical interest is
> pretty hard right now.  If I want to find all the available roguelikes:
>
> cwebber@jasmine:~$ guix package -A rogue
> hyperrogue	10.5	out	gnu/packages/games.scm:3652:2
> roguebox-adventures	2.2.1	out	gnu/packages/games.scm:1047:2

I’m surprised you don’t mention --search, which is more appropriate than
-A (‘-A’ is here only to search among package names):

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ guix package -s roguelike | recsel -p name,relevance
name: roguebox-adventures
relevance: 7

name: tome4
relevance: 5

name: crawl
relevance: 5

name: crawl-tiles
relevance: 5

name: cataclysm-dda
relevance: 5

name: angband
relevance: 5
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I’m very much in favor of improving ‘--search’ until we’re happy with
the results it gives.

WDYT?

Ludo’.