Package Net Metadata

Metadataelements for Software Packages

Peter Gietz, DAASI International GmbH

This proposal borrowes from following sources:

1.) Metadata for Tcl Extensions by Steve Casidy source: http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/55.html

2.) LSB Package Metadata format by Rahul Dave, Univ. of Pennsylvania source: http://reno.cis.upenn.edu/rahul/standards/packrdf/packformat48.html

The aim was to use as many DC elements as possible.

Not yet decided which of the elements to specify as mandatory and which as optional.

Following elements are defined:

• DC.Title

This element is used for the name of the package

• DC.Title.Version

Version of the package

• DC.Title.Release

Release number of the package

• DC.Creator

This element contains the name of a main responsible author of the SW package

(This must not neccessarily be the packager, see DC.Publisher.Packager)

• DC.Contributor

This element is a string analogous to the Creator element which contains the name of a contributor to the package.

• DC.Publisher

This element names an entity responsible for making the package available.

Following qualifiers can be used:

• DC.Publisher.Packager

This qualified element names an entity responsible for the packaging

• DC.Publisher.Vendor

This qualified element names an entity that sells the package

• DC.Rights

Typically, a Rights element will contain a rights management statement for the resource, or reference a service providing such information. This will usually be a reference to the license under which the package is distributed. This can be a free form string naming the license or a URL referring to a document containing the text of the license.

If the Rights element is absent, no assumptions can be made about the status of these and other rights with respect to the resource.

Examples

BSD, http://www.opensource.org/licenses/artistic-license.html

Following qualifier can be used:

• DC.Rights.Types

This qualified element contains the copyright type specified in a controlled vocabulary, namely following types: opensource, shareware, commercialsource, commercial.

• DC.Identifier

URL of the SW package, eg. ftp url for retrieving the package

• DC.Identifier.Sources

URL of the package containing the complete sources

• DC.Date.Available

This element is the release date of the package in the form YYYY-MM-DD.

Example

2002-01-23

• DC.Date.BuildDate

This qualified element contains the Build date in the usual unix date format

Example

Sun Mar 29 19:44:53 EST 1998

• DC.Description

This element is a free form string briefly describing the package.

• DC.Description.Summary

This qualified element contains a short summary of the description

• DC.Description.Filelist

This qualified element contains a complete list of all files in the package

• DC.Relation.Require

This qualified element names a package that must be installed for this package to operate properly. This should have the same format as the package require command.

Example

http 2.0

• DC.Relation.Recommend

This qualified element declares a strong, but not absolute dependency on another package. In most cases this package should be installed unless the user has specific reasons not to install them.

• DC.Relation.Suggest

This qualified element declares a package which would enhance the functionality of this package but which is not a requirement for the basic functionality of the package.

• DC.Relation.Conflict

This qualified element names a package with which can't be installed alongside this package. The syntax is the same as for DC.Relation.Require. If a conflicting package is present on the system, an installer might offer an option of removing it or not installing this package.

• DC.Relation.Moreinfo

This element is a string containing an url referring to a document or site at which the information about the package can be found. This url is not the location of the distribution, as this might be part of a larger repository separate from the package site.

Example

http://www.shlrc.mq.edu.au/steve/tcl/

• DC.Subject

The topic or content of the package expressed as a set of Keywords. At some future time, a set of canonical keywords may be established by a repository

manager.

• DC.Type

The nature or genre of the content of the resource. For SW package this should always be "software"

• DC.Format

The physical or digital manifestation of the resource. This might be used by archive maintainers to specify the format of a package archive, eg. zip, tar etc.

• DC.Source

A Reference to a resource from which the present resource is derived.

• DC.Language

A language of the intellectual content of the resource. Could be used if multi-language packages are available. Should use the two letter language code defined by RFC 1766, eg. 'fr' for French, 'en' for English.

• Architecture

This element is a string describing one of the architectures supported in the distribution. As a distribution is allowed to contain the files for several architectures, this element may appear multiple times and should correspond to a directory in the distribution.

Example

i386

• OS

This element is for describing the operating system. Again more than one can be named

Example

linux

• packagesize

This element contains the number of Bytes of the package

• installedsize

This element contains the number of Bytes of the installed software

-- PeterGietz