Re: Adding tags to packages

[Pjotr Prins]

On Sun, Jan 03, 2016 at 06:15:32PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Tags are more than keywords in this case.
> 
> The query language helps users make fine-grain searches.  I think tags
> would be much less useful without it.  But this is non-trivial
> development work.


The idea of a simple tag system is appealing. Even without approved
tags. I think we can add it, even if it grows wild and wrong. It is a
simple form of metadata that can be useful for specific purposes
(games, bioinformatics). I don't think we need to approve tags - let
the relevant parties sort it for themselves. Tags should be single
words, so multiple can be listed, that would be the main criterium.

Even so, I agree with you that a fully searchable meta-data would be
extremely useful too, i.e., how do we find relevant software when we
need it. This is an effort that spans distributions, for sure.
Because GNU Guix has no tags at all, I was thinking of creating a
tagging system for bioinformatics outside GNU Guix, possibly using
wikipedia infrastructure and RDF. Not sure that is really the best
way, but if it works it would address the need for finding relevant
software.

Please, let's not try to make this complicated. We are no Debian.

Pj.