[m-users.] On package managers for Mercury

[Julian Fondren]

On 2019-08-29 14:33, M McDonough wrote:
> Can I suggest adding zlib and Mozilla MPL2 licenses to the license
> list? More than a couple of the "other" licensed packages on the list
> use those.
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Aye, I noticed that, along with the git submodule use. When that's
updated the next 'mmc-get update' will probably break mmc-get,
but the news blurb will warn of that.

The idea of the restraint on the licenses in the package list (just
'gpl', not 'AGPLv3.333') is a consequence of my wanting to put
intelligence in mmc-get itself rather than in the data, and to keep
details about packages that could change in the repos where the owner
can more easily change them. So you'd see 'gpl' in the package list and
if you wanted to know precisely what license it was you could

a. (for now) clone the package and look in it

b. (ideally) run 'mmc-get list <package> license' or such and mmc-get
would try to get this information for you.

Same deal with long package descriptions and installation notes.

But, maybe programmers care too much about licenses for this to work.
Alternately maybe there's too little value in abstracted licenses like
'gpl'.

Should the license type just be 'string'?

There's no worry in the namespace getting too cluttered since it's still
going to be reviewed.