[Pkg-javascript-devel] Bug#963112: node-katex_0.10.2+dfsg-2_amd64.changes REJECTED

[Simon McVittie]

On Sun, 12 Jul 2020 at 13:11:48 +0530, Pirate Praveen wrote:
> It is over two weeks since I added debian/README.Debian, some feedback on it
> (if it is sufficient or if you need more time to discuss it inside team)
> would be good.

(Not an ftp team member, etc.)

Following up on this: I think part of the issue here might be the katex
package's Description and other metadata fields. From the version visible
in the NEW queue:

    Package: katex
    Provides: node-katex (= 0.10.2+dfsg-3)
    Section: javascript
    Description: Fast math typesetting for the web
     KaTeX is a fast, easy-to-use JavaScript library for TeX math rendering on the
     web.
     .
     KaTeX supports all major browsers, including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera,
     Edge, and IE 9 - IE 11.
     .
     Node.js is an event-based server-side JavaScript engine.

To me, that doesn't look like a user-facing executable; it looks like
a JavaScript library, that happens to have an executable entry point
so unimportant that the package description doesn't even mention it.
The package's contents also seem to be 90% usr/share/nodejs/katex, which
supports that point of view.

When I talked about user-facing executable programs like tappy, flatpak,
kmod, libglib2.0-bin in the technical committee advice, what I had in mind
was something more like this:

    Package: katex
    Section: tex              (or math or web or something)
    Depends: nodejs           (etc.)
    Description: Utility to convert mathematical expressions from TeX to HTML
     KaTeX is a fast, easy-to-use JavaScript library for TeX math rendering on the
     web.
     .
     This package contains a command-line utility to render mathematical
     expressions written in TeX into HTML.

(Or whatever it actually does - I might have misunderstood.)

Do you see the difference in emphasis between that, and what you've done
in the version in NEW? It's a utility that does something hopefully
useful, which you can describe in functional terms that are unrelated
to its implementation language.

Relatedly, if usr/share/nodejs/katex (perhaps excluding cli.js) and the
"Provides: node-katex" moved into libjs-katex, would that give libjs-katex
any undesirable dependencies? That would leave the katex.deb package
containing only /usr/bin/katex, which would make its purpose extremely
clear. It would still be tiny, and the Packages file wouldn't get any
smaller, but the dividing line between binary packages would be in a place
that's easier to justify.

The remaining question for the maintainer and the ftp team would be:
is the /usr/bin/katex utility sufficiently general-purpose and useful
that people would genuinely want to install a package that contains only
that utility? If they would, then I think a package as described above
makes sense. However, if it's more like an example, demo, manual test
or toy than something people would genuinely use, an alternative would
be to install it in /usr/share/doc/libjs-katex/examples, which doesn't
require a Depends on its interpreter.

If /usr/bin/katex is a useful tool in its own right and not just an
example, one thing that would provide good supporting evidence would be
to write a man page for it, describing how to use it in terms that make
sense for someone who wants to batch-convert TeX into HTML using a CLI,
and does not want to have to be aware of anything specific to node.js.

I hope that makes sense?

    smcv