[AppStream] RFC: A UniqueID in AppStream

[Richard Hughes]

On 9 August 2016 at 17:33, Matthias Klumpp <matthias at tenstral.net> wrote:
> For what do you need that exactly?

So, I've got reservations about dropping the "type" of component for
several reasons:

 * Are we sure there is no ID overlap between addons, apps and firmware?
 * Sometimes we want to treat the component differently depending on
the type, for instance not requiring descriptions for addons, or
allowing release links in firmware components.

Although, in this case if the point point holds I agree I don't need
this in the unique_id.

>> I think you've convinced me, actually :) I've dropped arch and version
>> from the API.
>
> \o/

Well, there's no point me asking for comments if I'm not going to take advice :)

> The "Merge rules" are really terrible at time, which is something I
> wanted to discuss anyway: Do we ever want to have a merge component
> *deleting* data from existing metadata? Should, for list types like
> <categories/>, the merge component extend those or replace those?

So, I don't think "merge" is a type; it's a policy on what to do on
conflict. I think that <component merge="replace"> and <component
merge="append"> is much more flexible, and doesn't mean we have to
overload the type parameter with a virtual type that just encodes
merge policy.

Richard.