[packagekit] Cross-distro package mapping and matching?

[Sebastian Pipping]

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/