[Bro-Dev] Package manager meta data

[Robin Sommer]

On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 20:57 +0000, you wrote:

> Here’s a summary of the set of changes I plan to make related to
> package metadata, let me know if there’s objections or alternate
> ideas:

Sounds all good to me. That should make the Python API easier to use
for accessing meta information, too.

Some questions for my understanding:

> remove mentions of ‘version' field from bro-pkg.meta as versioning is
> done entirely by git tags

What will be the relationship between version tags and the master
branch? Is master just another version I can select to install?

> 4) new command/flag `bro-pkg refresh --aggregate-metadata <pkg
> source>`:

A shortcut "bro-pkg refresh" might be useful here that simply does
that for all configured sources.

Also, what if I update the meta information locally, but then later
the remote repository updates its version as well, so that mine gets
stale. Would the newer remote version replace the local version?

> single file at the top-level named “aggregate.meta”.  Only metadata
> from current master branches of packages is included

Depending on the answer to the version question above, an alternative
could be using the most recent version (i.e., the commit that that
version tag refers to). That way people could control a bit better
when meta data gets updated (it's when they set a new version). It
would still fallback to master if no version tag is set.

Robin

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