[packagekit] Cross-distro package mapping and matching?

[Matthias Klumpp]

Hello!
This is a great idea. Some months ago I wrote an e-mail to the rpmseek.com
webmasters asking if I could use their database to build a tool like this,
but I never recieved a reply.
I thought as I had this idea I could make it possible to fully integrate
RPM packages into a DEB based system by creating a "wrapper" for foreign
packages, but then I decided to create a new package format to do this job
because there were large difficulties in integrating RPM packages to the
DEB-based package management system and vice versa.
The idea to use this feature for statistical reasons I've never had. An
integration to Fedora's Smolt service is a great idea!
If someone is already working on this application, I would collaborate too.
Regards
    Matthias

On Sun, 07 Jun 2009 03:44:19 +0200, Sebastian Pipping
<webmaster at hartwork.org> wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> 
> Git is "dev-util/git" in Gentoo but "git-core" in Debian.
> Is there any project/library/tool that does package name mapping?
> Is such a service part of or planned for PackageKit?
> 
> 
> I am working on extending Smolt [1] (basic hardware tracker, think
> "what soundcard do I run") into a software tracker (think "what
> software do I have installed") suitable for the needs of Gentoo under
> the umbrella of Google Summer of Code 2009.  This goal will extend to
> cross-distro software tracking in the long run, maybe even the
> short run.
> 
> To be able to count Git from different distros into the same bucket
> I will need a package mapping/matching facility.  My current vision
> would use an interlingua, a language of distro-agnostic package
> identifiers.  Someone recommended CPE [2] (Common Platform Enumeration)
> for that langauge in chat today.  A CPE URI for any version of Git
> could be
> 
>   cpe://a:git-scm:git
> 
> So if we had a mapping from "dev-util/git" to "cpe://a:git-scm:git" for
> Gentoo and a mapping from "git-core" to "cpe://a:git-scm:git" for
> Debian, we could count both into the Git bucket, allowing us to
> 
>   - collect cross-distro metrics of greater significance
>   - fairly compare the actual number of packages accross distros
>   - better understand needs and differences among distros
>   - get distros one more step closer together
> 
> To not oversimplify, a slight extra complexity is added by compile time
> configuration flags ("use flags" in Gentoo) for source-based distros:
> 
>   For example if the package "app-admin/webalizer" is compiled with
>   use flag "geoip" I might want it to map to "cpe://a.sysd:geolizer" [3]
>   instead of "cpe://a.mrunix:webalizer" [4], or maybe I want both.
> 
> As Smolt is written in Python at least a Python API is required.
> 
>   - Is anybody working on such a tool?
>   - Are there possibilites for collaboration?
> 
> I'm looking forward to your feedback!
> 
> 
> 
> Sebastian
> 
> 
> [1] https://fedorahosted.org/smolt/
> [2] http://cpe.mitre.org/
> [3] http://sysd.org/stas/node/10
> [4] http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/
> 
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