[Bro-Dev] Package manager meta data

[Robin Sommer]

Playing with Bro packages and bundles, there's one thing where I ended
up a bit confused and that's the meta data. We have two places right
now that store meta data about a package: there's the central set
stored with the package source (bro-pkg.index), and then there's the
set coming with the package itself (bro-pkg.meta). However, I'm a bit
lost what goes where, and which information should remain accessible
once things are bundled up.

Seems bro-pkg.meta generally has "description" and "tags" at least.
However, that information seems lost once I bundle a package up and
don't have access to the index repository anymore. There doesn't seem
to be an expectation that bro-pkg.meta would have similar information,
so there's nothing there to fill the gap.

Then, bro-pkg.meta has a "version" field (the docs show that as the
one field to put in there). I believe that version isn't really used
anywhere other than showing it as part of the meta data output in
"info". In Python it also maps to PackageInfo.metadata_version. But
then there's also PackageStatus.current_version, which is from git
(although I'm not sure how I would actually set that; is it just any
tag?).

Once packages go through bundle/unbundle I cannot run "info" when I'm
offline, and hence I don't get some of the information anymore (same
from Python with PackageInfo I believe)

Ideally, what I'd like to have is a single interface (speaking in
Python API terms) for a package that gives me all the meta-data
consistently, pulling it out from where's it's stored and maintaining
it when bundling. For things like "description", "tags", it could pull
them out of bro-pkg.index by default, and maybe override them from
bro-pkg.meta if they are defined there (so that one can set them even
if there's no package source to begin with). And bundles would then
carry the information through, probably inside their manifest. For
version information, bro-pkg could start with the git branch/tag but
override it with values from bro-pkg.index and bro-pkg.meta if defined
there. That way people could choose how to do their versioning. The
API would just offer a single version() doing the right thing, and
"bro-pkg info" would show that.

Does this make sense? I'm not quite sure about the reasons for the
current structure, I'm mostly thinking from the perspective of
information about the package I'd like to have access to easily, and
where it's coming from.

Robin

-- 
Robin Sommer * ICSI/LBNL * robin at icir.org * www.icir.org/robin