Source package pages don't describe what the package is for

Bug #73116 reported by Matthew Paul Thomas
26
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Fix Released
Medium
Julian Edwards

Bug Description

Neither a distribution source package page, nor a distro release source package page, contains any information about what the package is for.

For example, <https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/bum> gives me a list of all the versions of bum ever published in Ubuntu, but doesn't tell me what bum actually is.

Distribution source packages have distribution release source packages, which produce binary packages, which have binary package releases, which have descriptions that appear in programs like Synaptic. Therefore the page for a distribution source package, and for a distribution release source package, can list each of the binary packages produced by the most recent release, along with the description included in each of them. This would be much more interesting than a complete publishing history, so should appear above it.

Revision history for this message
Celso Providelo (cprov) wrote :

I see your point, it's a side-effect of not having proper summary/description for a source.

I agree we need to find out what information we should present in this page to save clicks (users get very bored by this, indeed).

We could present the same widget we use in the respective DistributionSourcePackageRelease [1], which contains a tree of each binary (with its summary and description) produced by the last SourcePackageRelease published in the released DistroRelease. That's what *packages* interface does [2]

Despite the large number of assumptions we need to do, this specific change may be awful for sources with a large number of binaries, like, for instance, in [3]. The same problem is observed in *packages* interfaces, [4].

*packages* has only one page to represent a "source version in a distrorelease", Launchpad, instead has 4 and even if the model is the same the information gets spread and harder to find in Launchpad.

Anyway, I'm glad to add the mentioned widget to the 4 pages in question, if you liked it.

[1] https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/bum/2.1.8-1
[2] http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/edgy/source/bum
[3] https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17/2.6.17.6-1
[4] http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/edgy/source/linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

It seems that each binary package has a short description and a long description. Perhaps both can be shown if the source package produces up to, say, ten binary packages, otherwise the short description only.

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

An example of this bug, from Shirish Agarwal: "While I'm pretty sure that https://beta.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netspeed/ is the same netspeed as given at http://www.wh-hms.uni-ulm.de/~mfcn/netspeed/ there is no way to know for sure. I looked at the changelog 'aptitude changelog netspeed' which tells me its 0.13 but nothing on the overview page tells me whether its the same one. There is no description on the overview page nor is there the link to the package home page." The project URL is included in the description at <https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netspeed/0.13-1ubuntu1>, so if that description was copied up to the source package overview page, Shirish's problem would have been solved.

Revision history for this message
Shirish Agarwal (shirishag75) wrote :

Glad you did that, it describes the things perfectly. So this can be marked duplicates of both the bugs. I have subscribed to both of them so people can take a look at there as well as here & if necessary can shoot me a mail.

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

Shirish, both what bugs? Was that comment meant for a different bug report?

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Shirish Agarwal (shirishag75) wrote :

there was also another bug-report which you mentioned in bug 113573 . Now I see its another bug-report altogether, nothing to do with what we talked/shared.

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era (era) wrote :

Let me second this. Every time I was on the "Bugs" tab and clicked "Overview", I was disappointed. I have mostly stopped doing that now. Still, it would be useful to be able to find package descriptions, sort of what you get out of the box with packages.debian.org/$packagename

Revision history for this message
Jérôme Guelfucci (jerome-guelfucci-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

One thing I think that is still lacking is a Homepage field, now that we have a filed for this in debian/control it should be easier to set. When triaging bugs if you don't know where the upstream website is, to forward a bug, and if you can't find it with google, you have to search through the source to find something. The email of the upstream authors (if available) could also be useful.

Revision history for this message
LaserJock (laserjock) wrote :

The lack of any package description on the source page is a real problem for me. It's helpful when you're working with a large number of packages (say MOTU Science team with 500+ packages) since you can't remember what all the packages do. I end up running between apt-cache and LP trying to do work which is a bit of a pain. Perhaps if a source produces only a single binary the description from that could be used straight away. If multiple binaries are produced then perhaps the short descriptions with a dropdown area for the full description would work?

Overall the overview page is nice from a publishing perspective, but not really much help when you want to know about the software itself (like Homepage, if it's maintained in VCS, etc.) I realize that some information (maintainer, build-deps, component, section) are release-dependent but I feel like having the latest information from the development release is too useful to have to dig around for all the time.

Revision history for this message
Morten Kjeldgaard (mok0) wrote :

The lack of the package description has annoyed me for a long time, and like Jordan says, requires you to dig out the information elsewhere. It only adds to the time needed by otherwise unpaid developers and volunteers when working with bug fixing and package sync'ing, merging and other development work.

While there are no source package descriptions per se, the synopsis and description of the _first_ package would be a reasonable compromise. Most are single packages anyway.

This bug seems to be stuck in no-mans-land, still in status "New" and Importance "Undecided". Could we move forward with this, please?

Revision history for this message
Julian Edwards (julian-edwards) wrote :

We're embarking on a major redesign of the package pages and their navigation in the next month or two, after Launchpad is open sourced. This bug will get addressed as part of that redesign.

Thanks for everyone's comments, we'll make sure we take everything into account.

Changed in soyuz:
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Triaged
tags: added: pkg-nav-redesign ui
Changed in soyuz:
milestone: none → 3.0
Revision history for this message
Julian Edwards (julian-edwards) wrote :

In the new page design I'm working on, if an upstream is linked it will display its description.

Changed in soyuz:
status: Triaged → In Progress
assignee: nobody → Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)
Revision history for this message
Julian Edwards (julian-edwards) wrote :

Fixed in devel r9299

Changed in soyuz:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Changed in soyuz:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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