Free Software Directory:Import
We have begun the process of importing packages from the main area on Debian GNU/Linux. Right now the process is three steps:
- We have a tool (to be published on savannah shortly) that collects package metadata and outputs a JSON file.
- By hand we clean-up the JSON file, such as removing parts of the description that are Debian-specific and whatnot.
- We then generate a set of wiki files that are then imported into the Directory using a simple import script.
See Debian-2013-03-20 for statistics on our first round of importing from Debian.
Further work on importer
- The first challenge is to figure out what trisquel projects correspond to which FSD projects, and which ones have no match in the other database.
- I've written a program that takes lines of tab-separated fields and returns info about approximate matches. Once the output is generated, people need to go through it and select the correct choice. You can get the input i used and the output it generated in an attachement to the directory-discuss mailing list.
- Then, a program needs to read from the Trisquel package database, to gather all of the info.
- malberts was talking on irc about a program (the appnr api used by appnr.com) that downloads apt package info from a repository and then adds the info into a sql database, and offers an api for working with the data.
- Then a program needs to be written to automatically update FSD entries based on the Trisquel data.
- If/when the flagged revs plugin is installed, then those updates can be approved on a case-by-case basis, to make sure that things match, and nothing is broken.