[Soc-coordination] Supporting semantic formats for meta-data would be interesting - Was: Re: [GSoC] Using a messaging system to interface the different parts of Debian infrastructure

[Simon Chopin]

(we should maybe continue this thread on soc-coordination only? Keeping
Olivier in Cc anyway)

Hi Olivier,

Quoting Olivier Berger (2013-04-10 13:35:13)
> I think that it would be great, for maximum interoperability (derivative
> distros, upstreams, others), if the data about Debian artifacts could be
> using semantic formats such as the one I've tried to add to the PTS [0].
> 
> So in addition to offering anyone (inside or outside Debian) the
> possibility to interface with the events happening in that
> infrastructure, it would convey non-ambiguous semantics out of the box.
> 
> So, instead of mentioning an upload about "apache2" (a string that is
> supposed to deal represent a source package of the Apache 2 HTTP
> server), a message could reference
> <http://packages.qa.debian.org/apache2#project> which is a
> dereferenceable URI (see http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/apache2.ttl)
> where meta-data about that source package is available.

Thanks for your input and the URLs, I didn't know about those.

While I like the idea of semantics in the data, if I receive a message
from dak saying that apache2 has been uploaded, I don't expect it to
contain anything else than the name of the package for the simple reason
that it's pretty much all dak knows about it at the time of the upload.

Since we have a simple URL scheme for the Turtle data, I would simply
let the listener use the package name to fetch the data if they need it.
However, if this data is generated — I might be very wrong on that, I
have no clue at all — you could simply send a message when the
generation is done, which might be of bigger interest for those using
the semantics than the information about the upload.

To me, this infrastructure should be lightweight, since it would be
impossible to give out URLs fitting all intents and purposes.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/soc-coordination/attachments/20130412/27793254/attachment.pgp>